


There Is Only Forward

by Nerdanel (telanaris)



Series: There Is Only Forward [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Arlathan, Canon Divergent, Courtship, Dreams, Emerald Knights, F/M, Memory, Post-Tresspasser, Pro-Mage, Sort-of, Visions, lots of Solas feelings, lots of quality fade time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 10:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 225,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9652301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/Nerdanel
Summary: Trapped in a dream she cannot escape, Lavellan is forced to relive the years she spent in the Inquisition—the years she spent with Solas. But not all is as it should be, for the longer she lingers in the dream, the more it begins to diverge from memory and become something else entirely, a path that—once her feet have been set upon it—will be difficult to leave.





	1. Tingling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the sound— _his_ voice, melodic and resonant—was certainly coming from this creature, this spirit, this _thing_ which had pursued her in silence from the wilds of Haven to the barren dunes of the Wastes and back. But only now, for the first time, did she feel as though she was possibly in real danger. Something about staring the White Wolf in the face like standing on the edge of a precipice and preparing to leap. A feeling in her throat: the thrill and the fear of finally catching up to something worth knowing. The knowledge, just beyond her grasp, as frightening as it was seductive. She should know better, perhaps, and yet, after all these months of aimlessness….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Coming out swinging with some smut right in the beginning. It won't be every chapter, but there is some definitely NSFW content right off the bat.

_Running proceeding arduously incessantly perpetually unbroken and unceasing and uninterrupted restless racing sprinting springing tearing through [would do anything and give everything to—] bounding breaking footfall after footfall rushing such dashing (in pursuit of…?) darting {something some familiar darkness always out of reach} aimless and insistent [and the sound of drums] and maimed, halved, mangled; lost._

 

With a gasp (clipped and sudden, like the way a twig snaps underfoot) her eyes open, and she is alone.

The sunlight weaves through the canopy of leaves in streaks, falls on the green in hazy patches, shifting shapes with the breeze. The fingers of the mammoth trees hold the blue sky back, beyond—scarred. Here, in the Graves, she avoids the glens, the clearings that would reveal (should she turn her gaze skywards) the delicate silk-like strand that shudders and twinkles, permanent and fixed, glimmering through even the thickest of clouds. The duality of the thing disturbs her: a presence and an absence at once. For some it serves a reminder of what had been, what almost was; a tale of caution. Once, that scar had inspired in her feelings of triumph, but now, when she looks at it, all she can feel is the burden of her shame. Better, then, not to—if she can help it.

Alone—more alone than she had ever been, in her self-imposed isolation. Alone since the Exalted Council and the shattering of the Inquisition, and everyone she loved scattered in the wind like dandelion seeds, dispersed. If she had asked—Cullen, Cassandra, Cole—would they have joined her? The question hangs in her mind like a snare, a trap; too many dark roads to go down and she will not walk them, not rehash her regrets, not now. She has only just wakened and the questions are less important than the searching (running proceeding arduously) no matter how rudderless the search continues to be.

They are all preoccupied otherwise, after all: shattered, but not without purpose, all her friends and their grand ambitions. She could not have possibly torn them away from their plans, even if they had offered to accompany her. For too long they had suffered from her own lack of foresight, her blindness, her mistakes. No more. 

This was her mess to clean, her wrong to right, her own shame—a mark far less evident than the anchor but no less oppressive for it.

 

Of course, she had not been _utterly_ alone, but even when not alone she had been occupied with feelings of _loneliness._ After the Council, the Crossroads, and her contemporaneous brush with Death (that specific confrontation with her own mortality, more violent than it had ever been before) she had wanted, beyond wanting, to see her family. 

She had placed the task of refocusing the Inquisition in Cullen’s most capable hands, and rode North directly, traveling along the coast until she came to the Vimmark Mountains. From there, she had moved inland, riding between the Mountains and the vast flatlands of the Minanter River basin as she moved across the Free Marches like a rumor on the wind. For weeks, she had travelled alone and as inconspicuously as she could, along the very path that had taken her to the Conclave. Without a retinue of soldiers or the company of her friends—without the glow upon her hand (without a left hand to speak of)— she was never recognized, not even once. 

Days upon days she spent in the woods and plains of the North, until she had begun to smell the sea again, the salty smell of the Amaranthine Ocean as the Vimmarks shrunk, diminishing both in number and size. Utterly alone, but the sight of Wycome just at the horizon like a promise of a reprieve from that loneliness, swelling inside of her as she approached and saw the green sails of her Clan’s aravels, only to be broken, deflated by the answer to that most important question, the first words out of her mouth as her Clan surrounded her just outside the city limits: “Where’s Drohan?” met with an uncomfortable silence that shattered her. Trying her best not to let that sinking feeling inside of her (absence upon absences, gaping heartache widening) rob the rest of the Clan of the joy of seeing her: their valiant daughter returned home after nearly five years of trials and triumph. Though of course, she had not stayed with them for long.

 

A languid stretch breaks her groggy recollection. In one swift movement, she rolled into herself and upwards and upright—her feet stumbling over the cool grass as she struggled to right herself, cursing under her breath. Her sense of balance was still not quite right. It had been only a few months since she had lost her arm, and she was still adjusting. But the loss was impossible to forget—the throbbing that had plagued her in the Crossroads with each pulse of the anchor had persisted despite the offending appendage having been long since removed. 

The healers had told her it was in her head. Perhaps that was true. The alternative—that the throbbing signaled some piece of the anchor, embedded, its hold still upon her—was almost too painful to consider. _(No more reminders, no more shards of him in me.)_

From a pouch at her waist, she withdrew a pipe, hand-carved, a troop of tiny arrows decorating the bowl and stem. Beneath the pipe was stored a fist-sized bear-skin pouch, tied shut. As she untied and unfolded the soft skin of the package, the pungent scent of dried elfroot rose up to greet her, but as she packed the pipe—the first task she learned to accomplish unidexterously—she was thinking of Sera. “ _Now don’t get out of hand, you. After all, you’ve not got a spare anymore._ ” These were the parting words that had accompanied the gift of the pipe, the pouch, and its contents. Sera could always be relied upon to not take things too seriously. Her company had been a great relief after the Council had concluded, for however briefly they’d been together.

The most delicate of flames danced on her fingertips and caught the dried root leaves, and swiftly (so as not to lose the ember) she brought the pipe to her mouth and pulled. In, sweetly and sharp. A fogginess descending on her faculties, dulling the phantom pain in her left arm and blurring the memory of the black wolf which stalked her in her sleep.

_(Stalking wolves, certainly she was familiar—but never before had it been black:)_

Every night, the same choreography: supine on tender grass in some verdant place in the Fade, smelling of petrichor, and he comes, as he always does, now (or merely reveals himself to her [perhaps always watching {how does he always find her?}]) and she props herself upward and meets his gaze and the staring seizes everything, suspended like a frozen thing (like one of his paintings) until she can bear the distance no longer and she rises—but he will permit no closer approach, turning to leave, tail twisting this and that way winding like a river and she runs and she runs [racing sprinting tearing through {would do anything} bounding] and the green stretches onwards through mountains and across streams into waking as she runs without any sign of her quarry or any real chance of success, running because moving is more bearable than sitting still, stillness a burden, for what it means is that she is doing nothing to close the distance between them, to bring him into closer proximity.

Every morning, the same choreography: awake to find the world a little more green in the Graves than in the dream-space but a little more empty, a bit more foreboding. A little more despair upon waking, and the throbbing in her arm, signifying far more than the loss of a mere appendage. Awake and stretch to puffs of fragrant smoke and the slight alleviation of an aching that never really leaves.

And then to the pigment: _For I stand for them as much as I stand for Thedas, and I will stand with them regardless of how all of this ends._

The words come to her too violent and vibrant in the full bloom of the bitterness with which she said them. And even now it is as if she is saying them not again but for the first time, the muscles of her face contorting in an expression of displeasure and the column of her throat tightening and moving to give the air the shape of the words—but not a sound escapes her. The language only in her head, or the words merely caught in her throat.

Bitterness with the bristles of the brushes against her scarred skin.

And only then, marked with the vallaslin (the stain of servitude [trapped, like them] so expertly counterfeit) she hoists her pack, and sets off.

Walking nowhere in particular, all of it familiar, in this green place of her ancestors. This was the place where the Emerald Knights dwelled in ages long gone by, gloried times of which the people of her Clan would tell such magnificent tales. Before all of it—before the conclave—she might have thought to implore those gallant heroes for assistance. Now there are no Gods left to pray to. There is no one left to beseech.

Each day walking until her feet lose feeling, walking ’til evening, ceasing at whim or when exhaustion takes her and makes progress impossible. 

She had wandered Thedas on foot for two months, alone and roaming, unrecognized and unheeded, watching the seasons change. Now, in the Graves, the embrium was just beginning to flower. The world beginning to warm, and teeming with life. Yet it all seemed so far away from her; somehow untouchable, as if she no longer belonged to it. Somehow the pieces don’t fit. When she was young and unmarked (unanchored?) untroubled, her clan would wander the world and she would marvel at every flower and bee. Now, everything felt hollow, and brought her no pleasure—as if all had already turned to ash—living and walking through the world as if his plans had already succeeded, everything (in a way) already all gone.

There was, of course, one thing that still she felt connected to, perhaps now more than ever. “Can you feel it,” he would say, “the Veil is thin here.” Stretched, paper-thin and perforated. She had plugged the holes as best she could and had hardly ever felt any of it—thin, wobbly, or squeaky, take your pick. But somehow, since the loss of her arm and the loss of the anchor, she was developing a sensitivity to the Veil that she had not had before. 

It was as if the anchor—with all its power to breach and seal, to rip the Veil to pieces—had dominated so much of her psyche that it had prevented her ability to feel the nuances of the Veil the way he could. And though she still could not claim the degree of sensitivity that Solas had possessed ( _why still call him that?_ ) she had begun to sense its density in a way she had not been capable of in the past. It presented itself as a humming, though not ominous, not unpleasant—not unlike a song, familiar to her although she did not know the tune or the words.

_Can you feel it? The Veil is thin here._

But how it wearied her, each time she took notice of it! Any sensitivity to the Veil or the Fade always brought her thoughts circling back to him, her greatest loss. In the Graves, it happens with regularity. She crosses into a clearing near the Rush of Sighs and it is like stepping into another world, everything slightly different, feeling less permanent and more malleable. The space hums with the friction between the Fade and the waking world, the veil crushed like rose petals between them until it is stretched like the thinnest of skins. Without noticing she is doing it, she finds herself humming with it. _Here_ , she thinks. _Perhaps here._

Her pack slipped from her shoulder and fell to the forest floor, the sound of its landing muffled by the grass and soft earth. In a graceful movement, she descended beside it and folded herself until she was cross-legged, stable and comfortable. Eyes closed. Breathing softly in time with the hum of the space around her, hanging in such a delicate balance, the Fade pressing so firmly against the Veil, insisting 

(caressing?)

 

Eyes closed: and suddenly she is supine again in that familiar verdant glen. Every night: the same choreography, the same gestures. Fade-eyes flickering open to meet-

-the vague light gleaming on a dark pelt, and eyes too intelligent and perceptive to ignore. ( _When he looked at her, it was as though he could see straight through her._ ) She propped herself upward, gaze arrested, and could see the creature tense at her movements—already aware it has been discovered, preparing to bolt. 

(It did not matter anymore, whether the wolf was who [or what] she thought it was. Blurred lines between faith and fact and she enacts this ritual every night, searching in her sleep as she searches in wakefulness, punishing herself with this futile task: pursuit for pursuit’s sake, a way of trying to keep a promise she has made—to him, to herself—even if she continually comes up short. _The Veil is_ —)

—trembling with the exertion of moving so _very slowly_ , tenderly and gingerly rising up to her feet. The space between them seems to hum and crackle as it changes shape, the lines all being redrawn, always in a constant state of renegotiation. Only here, caught in the stare, is she anything like what she used to be: standing tall, almost regal, confident in her knowledge of her self, her place in the world, her decisions, her path. (This endless chase, the only thing she remains sure of.) 

It is impossible to measure the time that passes as they stand apart from each other, unmoving, unflinching. She dares not draw closer and the Wolf remains, not retreating, not just yet. Every night the same gestures, as if this exchange of glances could one day bring answers, or solace, or some end to her shame. (Their guilt, twinned. What they have done to one another. The worlds they will destroy [in the name of one another].) 

_Telanadas!_

It wrenched her from the gaze of the wolf, eyes snapping to the trees behind him. A voice in her head—Ameridan’s?—but she could swear not a sound was uttered. The word occurred to her with such urgency, and with a warmth and a welcome moving over and through her, unprecedented. But nothing moved in the trees behind the wolf and so her eyes returned to him, full of suspicion (and a trace of wonder.) Why did Ameridan occur to her, now, and with such immediacy? Why in the presence of this creature? And suddenly the memory smarts with the sharp pain of an arrow—the spirit that held Telana crying out: _Ameridan! Beloved!_

_Beloved._

In the dreamscape she extended her left hand—still whole, here in the Fade, through some trick of desire or flexibility— towards the wolf, delicate and cautious, mindful. “Please,” and that, aloud, whispered, her despair hollowing her out like a husk as she took one soft step forward, reaching out for—what? Any answer. Any guidance. A way, if possible, to absolve herself.

The wolf never breaks her gaze, but neither does he stir. She dared a second step. Breath held and baited. The fingers of her outstretched arm trembled, palm opened upwards and extended. Imploring. _Please._ And a third step, and a fourth, the space between them closing slowly, her pace glacial. As slow as the earth changes, tectonic plates shifting towards one another, so heavy seemed the gravity of each of her actions as the fourth step becomes a fifth, a sixth—

And with not ten feet between them, the wolf turns. She could not prevent the cry of surprise and grief that the gesture wrestled out of her. Every night, the same choreography, no matter how much closer she comes to reaching him. The creature moved so quickly that all she caught as it darted away through the brush was the delicate swishing of its tail, but that alone was enough for her to break out into a sprint behind it, all pretense of caution left behind as she bolted after it.

For a time, she could still make out the dark shape of the creature not far ahead of her between the trees, moving with such grace, just beyond reach. A dark smudge of velocity in the landscape. The colors of that place seemed to pulse with each stride she made as she gave chase. But every time it seemed as though she was catching up, gaining ground, closing the space between them, the world stretched and twisted until the wolf was nearly beyond her sight, flickering so far ahead of her that any hope of crossing the space and keeping pace was quickly extinguished.

Before long she found herself in an unfamiliar glen, and with no visible sign of the wolf, no path left to track or pursue. She spun in place, nearly tripping over herself, her eyes frantic and mad, chest heave-caving (she had been so close) _Beloved—!_

“Inquisitor.”

—snapping around so quickly and violently the force of it nearly injured her, the voice both within and without now. No longer Ameridan’s, or Telana’s, but one that she recognized with such force of longing it felt like something anchored around her center was being tugged, wrenched, dragged by it. She had always hated it when he called her that, or by any of her titles. The wolf was nowhere near, long past disappeared beyond her vision, but the voice sounded so close— within arm’s reach. 

And then—and it crashed over her and knocked the breath from her lungs—she saw it. ( _Again._ )

A creature with a pelt like the clear and shining snow of the Emprise. It watched her from a distance of mere yards, its tail upright and undulating like a flame. Closer to her now than it had ever been—though it had never before found her here, not in the Fade. 

She was frozen, arrested—unsure that she could will her limbs to move even if she wanted to. It was as if they had been seized by some other force— and she knew that she should be panicking, probably, but instead, she surrendered. After all (after _all,_ everything) this creature was no stranger to her; and, despite the frequently ominous nature of its appearances, she was not dead yet. 

Something in the trees whispered, the voices layered, in the cadence of familiar voices and then there was _his_ smell of moss and wood fire and petrichor and dusty old books and fresco paint:

“I apologize for the intrusion.”

“What’s that?” she asked, both terse and intrigued at once, but the words were pulled out of her throat through no will of her own, and they took her by surprise—a surprise which did not register (could not register) on her face, frozen as it was in a look of curiosity and hesitance—as she turned around behind her. The Fade lurches and spins and the trees melt into red canvas and darkness and heat and she could see him in front of her and he looked so _real_ it nearly made her weep, hand extended, a small jar in his palm.

“A small token, to express my remorse.”

The Fade stutter-slips again, and then she was back in the forest, and she breathed like a diver coming up for air, clutching her throat, falling to her knees. But when she looked up, the White Wolf was inches from her, peering into her face. It tilted its head to the side in a distinctly canine gesture of curiosity.

“Inquisitor.”

And the sound— _his_ voice, melodic and resonant—was certainly coming from this creature, this spirit, this _thing_ which had pursued her in silence from the wilds of Haven to the barren dunes of the Wastes and back. But only now, for the first time, did she feel as though she was possibly in real danger. Something about staring the White Wolf in the face like standing on the edge of a precipice and preparing to leap. A feeling in her throat: the thrill and the fear of finally catching up to something worth knowing. The knowledge, just beyond her grasp, as frightening as it was seductive. She should know better, perhaps, and yet, after all these months of aimlessness….

Muzzle to fingertips, and the world slipped out beneath her and into blackness.

 

Every morning, the same choreography. She awoke, bare-faced, to find the world a little less warm than it used to be. (To find the bedroll, in the absence of another, a little less warm.) As always, she allowed herself a quiet moment of self-indulgence, staring at the tent ceiling, to dwell within that absence. She exhaled in a shaking, stuttering breath as the full force of the pain and the hurt moved through her, the feeling of his betrayal still fresh. But only now, first thing in the morning. Afterwards, she must put it aside, for there was still so much work to be done.

Beyond the red canvas walls of the tent she could hear them arguing. (When had they ever stopped? Always something to disagree over, and always because of the tremendous responsibility they all felt, the depths of their commitment.) The light leaking under the flaps of the tent changed shape as her companions paced before the campfire, their shadows stretching to where she lay, hidden, not yet prepared to face them. Though she could not hear what they were saying, she could detect the urgency in their voices. For a brief moment, she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and sighed. Then she rolled over to the corner of her tent.

A small mirror sat there, propped up on a stool, surrounded by half-burned candles which, with a groggy wave of her hand, she illuminated. It had never been so hard as it was here to keep up her charade: always waking in the evening when the light was gone, struggling in the dim to remember the paths the sacred ink used to trace on her face.

Her forehead and cheeks still showed evidence of yesterday’s handiwork, though the lines were cracked and faded and difficult to make out. Cross-legged, she pulled from a pouch at her waist a small jar and a brush, only a few hairs thick—stolen, naturally. She did not know whether she had taken from him out of spite or convenience (she wasn’t sure how she would have even gone about finding another tool quite as appropriate to the task) but regardless of her motivation, Solas had never commented on the theft. Even so, she doubted very much that he had failed to noticed its absence.

Wearily, she unscrewed the jar. A pungent, acidic scent greeted her, rousing her from her grogginess. Nose crinkled, she set the jar down on the stool and reached for the brush, but paused at the sight of herself, bare-faced, in the glass in front of her. These days, she could barely recognize herself, so far from who and what she had been before all this began. Ever since she had allowed the vallaslin to be removed, she had not felt like herself at all, and she knew she was dangerously close to becoming a person she did not neither recognized nor liked. She had given up her vallaslin at his suggestion, his insistence. What else might she have forsaken for his approval, if pressed? She was as angry with herself as she was with him. That he would _rob_ her of her heritage, her ties to her family (she missed them so dearly!) and that she would acquiesce to such an offer! And then only to have him leave….

Every morning, the same gestures: she dipped the brush into the jar and brought it to the center of her forehead, working outward in careful, exacting strokes. Each brush stroke was like a small flagellation, a reprimand, as she traced the curves in red across her face that marked her as a devotee of June. 

_It is said that he created himself._

“Inquisitor.”

A warm orange glow washed over her face and illuminated it briefly; she caught the clearest glimpse of herself in the mirror, face half-painted, in the act of _becoming_ as the tent flap opened and Solas entered, footsteps soundless. He allowed the flap to fall closed behind him and the dark enfolded them once more, but he remained by the entrance, arms folded. By the faint light of the candles she could see him watching her in the mirror.

“Cassandra is growing impatient,” he said, simply, without greeting her. So many of their conversations were like this now- clipped, formal. Utilitarian.

As pragmatic as he had always been.

“Did she send you in here to fetch me?” Thanduwen answered, without bothering to turn to face him. Both hands at her face, she continued to paint herself. “Or did you take it upon yourself to intrude?”

He was already tense, and the chastisement only seemed to stiffen him further. “She fears the Venatori will soon move camp, and that we will be left to wander the Wastes again with little intelligence with which to predict their location. We cannot afford to wait much longer.”

“Well, they can’t move during the day. The heat would make that as impossible for them as it is for us. And if they move in the evening, they’ll need illumination. We are close enough now that we would spot them if they chose to relocate.” The arguing she had heard outside her tent just moments before began to make sense. Still, she doubted it had ended in Solas volunteering (or being asked) to hurry her up. Especially considering that, since their decoupling, Cassandra and the rest of their companions had been nothing but patient with her. 

“Why are you really here, Solas?”

It was difficult to make him out in the candlelight, but she could see his body in the mirror shifting with discomfort, and a moment passed before he answered. “I must confess to a degree of fascination with this particular daily ritual of yours.”

“Fascination,” she ruminated, rolling the word around in her mouth. “What a diplomatic choice of words.”

“How so?”

“Don’t be coy, Solas, it does not suit you.” Her makeshift vallaslin still unfinished, she turned to face him, half-painted, in between her selves (who she is, who she wanted to be, for a time—who she might have become.) “It is, after all, your handiwork that my ‘daily rituals,’ as you call them, are designed to conceal.”

Facing him in the dark, she watched the barely noticeable shifts of his body, the way that particular muscles tensed, the subtle signs of his mood that she could only read after their months of intimacy. As usual, any reminder of their closeness smarts. She was hurting; now that he had interrupted her (now, of all times, when she was working so hard to _erase_ him) she could not resist the urge to try and hurt back. “You have done nothing but withhold the truth from me at every possible opportunity, as long as you could or as long as it was convenient for you. If you have something to say, now, at least have the decency to say it.”

Without waiting for a response she returned her gaze to the mirror. Once more, she lifted the paint brush to her face, though her eyes watched him carefully in the corners. 

The tone of his voice made clear how deeply her accusations had wounded him. “I told you what those markings mean. That, at least, was truth. I _removed_ them, for you.”

When she responds, she cannot keep the sharpness out of her voice (nor does she really attempt it.) “Yes, well I made that decision when I thought that we were…” Still no words for it, for _what they were_ , or rather, _had been_. Never labelled, perhaps impossible—an impossible task, to describe what he meant to her. For the briefest of moments her face softened. “And then we weren’t.”

It was now his turn to be frustrated. When he spoke, there was a tone of both bitterness and chastisement in his voice that she had never heard him use with her before—it shocked her to realize that it was the tone he used when he was speaking to Sera. “So you willingly apply this parody of them, morning after morning, to spite me—even knowing what they symbolize? The history of violence they signify?”

“Spite you!” she nearly spat, sneering, nose crinkling. She tossed the paintbrush on the stool and stood to face him, crossing the space between them with two aggressive strides. She raised a pointed finger towards him in a perfect gesture of accusation.

“Firstly, Solas, I don’t _know_ anything. All I have for it is your word standing against centuries of tradition—my family, my culture. You march around and tell me, ‘ _this is so,_ ’ but you never offer any explanation for why, though you have confessed on more than one occasion that the knowledge you gleam from the Fade is always subject to interpretation. Secondly—I am Inquisitor, but I am also Dalish, whether you or the Chantry like it or not. What I have done—what I have let you do to me—was a mistake which shames me to my core, to have shucked off the markings of my people like an old shirt, so easily discarded at first suggestion. For I stand for them as much as I stand for Thedas, and I will stand _with_ them regardless of how all of this ends.” 

“So no, I will not walk Thedas bare-faced, as if I am better than my friends, than my _family_ , privileged to some secret knowledge of how things once were. I have seen, now, how the rest of our people are treated, the dire circumstances they endure every day across the continent. And if I live through this—if I defeat Corypheus and see this thing through—my work will just be beginning. I can’t let our people live as slaves, Solas. Whatever you _think_ these marks are, what they really are is a promise never to submit, never to surrender—a promise that I cannot break.”

But he was doing that thing that he does, shutting down, eyes far away and face solemn, deliberately disengaging, as if there was no longer any room for compromise or reconciliation. A Solas slipping away, just beyond her grasp.

_Why do you go to that place where I cannot follow?_

She sighed and shook her head, diverting her gaze the floor. “Solas, it isn’t to spite you, or defy you, or hurt you. But I can’t abandon them.”

“As I abandoned you,” he said. It was a statement, not a question, and she could not tell if the note she detected in his voice was one of self-effacement or sarcasm. 

Her eyes searched his. Unable to restrain herself (though in truth she barely tried) she raised her hand upwards—twisted mere moments ago into an accusation—and held it against his face. Solas retreated almost immediately, trying to pull away from the touch, but she followed him, cornered him, ran her thumb tenderly over the sharp height of his cheek even as he refused to meet her gaze. “Aval’var banal’halam,” she whispered, only inches between them now, so close that he could feel her breath on his neck as she spoke the words. “You can always come home to me.”

Solas looked at her then, expression pained. “It is not that simple, vhenan,” he pleaded, raising a hand of his own to gently try and pry hers away from his face.

But her hand eluded him, refused capture, brushed instead down his jawline and over his neck. “It can be,” she insisted, hand sliding down and coming to a rest, palm opened against his chest, and she could feel the frantic, anxious pace of his heart beneath it. “It is.”

And he paused, for a moment, something suspended, and she could swear for the briefest of seconds that he began to dip his head downwards and towards her, lips just parted, a refusal or excuse perched on the tip of his tongue that he barely had the energy or the will to insist upon. She could see as plain as anything the way he battled himself: it raged in him, this resistance. Always, she felt so close—they had spent too much of their relationship on this knife’s edge, dangerously precarious, and if she could only convince him once more, anything to make him believe, to tip the scales—

“You should hurry,” he said, stepping outwards and away from her, her hand hanging uselessly in the air where it used to be perched on his chest. He could no longer meet her eyes. “I doubt Cassandra will appreciate being made to wait much longer.”

“Solas,” but he is gone through the tent flaps before she can even finish the second syllable. Watching him walk away like something tearing inside of her. She turned back to the mirror and sat with her head in her hands, willing herself into composure. 

This was no time for tears. The paint of her vallaslin was still drying; she could not let it run.

 

Later, after the Venatori nearby were slain (blood seeping into sand) they returned to their outpost. Thanduwen could feel Solas’ eyes on her as she walked towards her tent. He had been looking at her like that all evening, the motivations behind his gaze indiscernible. But she knew, perhaps better than anyone, that there was no use in pushing him. If he had something to say, he would only say it when he was prepared to do so.

The sky would soon begin to lighten, the deep purple of the night giving way to a softer shade of lavender, kissing the horizon where the sun would dip above the dunes and color the Wastes in shades of dust and red. Thanduwen crossed her tent, pinned the back flaps open, and stood, arms folded, watching the last moments of the night as it brightened, the stars still brilliant and twinkling. With an absent-mindedness that only comes with habit, she pulled a rag from a pouch at her waist and began to rub, in gentle circles, at her painted vallaslin. There was far less ritual than utility involved in the removal, scrubbing off what she could of the paint that remained. If she did not, the marks would sometimes bleed as she slept, leaving a smear of faded crimson which she would then have to clear in the morning before she could apply fresh paint.

She ran her fingers over her face gently, and, finding no trace of the texture of the pigments still clinging to her cheeks, she turned to her tent. But as she entered, the canvas at the front of the tent folded back and revealed, for the second time that evening, Solas. 

Both of them froze. She stood dumbstruck, bewildered at his unanticipated reappearance. 

“I apologize for the intrusion,” he offered hastily, hesitating for a moment but then dropping the flaps of the tent behind him. Once more they were closed off from anyone who might be watching around the campfire. Thanduwen’s eyes watched the cloth of the tent’s entrance sway and then still, before they met Solas’ own.

There was a moment of silence. Thanduwen offered nothing, only continued to stare at him, curious and hesitant. Solas adjusted his posture awkwardly, hand coming to the back of his neck. Then, from behind his back, he pulled a small jar. An arm extended, he offered it to her.

“What’s that?” she asked.

[ _—and it echoed and ricocheted through her, “what’s that?” and the gesture, that feeling of the curiosity, so at home, so familiar—recurring?—as if seeing, as if feeling again, returned to, these things not new or fresh at all but stale and too frequently revisited, though not like this with such vividness, such potency— and then for a moment she is both within and without, in and outside herself, and she can see herself, and the tent, and Solas, and everything that came before, and all that will come after, all that in this moment inside the tent she did not know (what bliss, that ignorance—what privilege, to think that the betrayals she had suffered until then were the worst to come—and the feeling of not being in the world but being somewhere else, within the tent but another space also, superimposed, malleable, constructed, and a pair of predator eyes watching her watching them—_ ]

“A small token, to express my remorse. It was wrong of me to criticize you,” he said, taking a few tentative steps towards her. He unscrewed the cap and held it out for her. Though she could not make out the color of its contents, even at a distance it smelled sweetly of crushed berries and wet earth.

“Forgive me,” he continued. “I have noticed that your paint has a tendency to bleed or smudge. And it is convincing—at a distance—but at close range the thickness of the paint won’t fool anyone. This mixture should work better—it’s composition makes it more like similar to a dye than a paint. The deception, therefore, will be less obvious. It should also save you the trouble of daily applications—once affixed, the marks should remain credible for at least a week. I believe I have mixed the pigment correctly to match the color, but if I have failed to do so, it can easily be corrected.”

Thanduwen looked up at him, incredulous. Not twelve hours ago he was condemning her for her decision to maintain her vallaslin; since that time, not only had he reversed his position, but he had found the time to mix this dye for her with the scant resources available to him in the Hissing Wastes. (Repressed and distant though it was, a small spark of pride was ignited within her. Her resourceful forager! Her herbalist artisan with such capable hands...)

Solas looked uneasy, perhaps unable to make out her expression in the dark. “Of course,” he continued, “if you prefer the paste you are currently using, there is no reason to change methods. But if there is anything I can provide you with, perhaps brushes of various thicknesses—”

“Solas,” she cut him off, taking a step towards him.

And before he could stop her or comprehend the shrinking space between them she was upon him, reaching her hand around the back of his neck to draw him closer and crush her mouth against his. He flinched, perhaps in surprise, but despite that slight retreat his lips parted for her. Her knees weakened, trembling at the feeling of his tongue, (how long had it been?) stroking along her bottom lip. His hands danced across her waist to the small of her back, caressing her and drawing her closer, inwards and deeper as if it was never enough—insatiable. Her hand reached down between them and pressed between his legs; he responded to the touch with a sharp inhale, and she could feel his arousal rising to greet the touch of her fingers, even as Solas released her and backed away—half hearted, hesitant. “Inquisitor, please,” he said, quietly, begging, but Thanduwen pursued him, continuing to tease him through his pants. “We shouldn’t,” he managed, even as his eyes were closed and his head was tilted forward, breathing already ragged.

“I want to,” she insisted, a grin on her lips, her hand rising then to accommodate fingers dipping below his waistband into his small clothes, hooking and tugging them down a few inches. “Don’t you?”

He stifled a groan, a throaty sound that was neither acceptance nor disapproval. Thanduwen dropped to her knees, her hooked fingers dragging Solas’ clothes downwards to his ankles as she did so. Her hands reached upwards and around him to the tops of his thighs just below the curve of his ass, and traced gentle lines downwards until they came to a rest at the back of his knees. She leaned forwards and placed a series of kisses on the inside of his thigh, following each with a gentle nip of her teeth. 

“We can pretend it happened a long time ago,” she suggested, words whispered against the muscles of his legs as they twitched with each press of her lips. Kissing upwards, she marked a trail of gentle love bites along the sensitive crease of his thigh, and she watched as his head fell backwards, face tilted skywards, the back of his hand swiftly flying to his mouth to muffle his keening. “Tomorrow,” she declared, burying the words against his pelvis, “we can pretend we _dreamt_ it.”

She raised a hand to wrap around his cock, already swollen. She opened her mouth—but was stopped by Solas’ hand, firm around her shoulder, holding her back. As he looked down at her, undecided, she smiled at him cheekily, and met his gaze even as her tongue darted out between her lips, closing what little space Solas had forced between them to drag the tip of it along the head of his cock. The change came over him in an instant, like the sound of a slamming door, and the intensity in his eyes—unrestrained, now—coiled and pooled into a wet warmth in the center of her pelvis as his hand released her shoulder, sliding instead up her neck, and into her hair, guiding her mouth closer.

No further encouragement was needed. Her lips wrapped around him and she closed her eyes and slid her mouth down and around him until her lips met his pelvis and her nose was buried in the handsome tuft of brown hair in the cradle of his hips. She breathed deep, reveling in the salty smell of him as her tongue ran along the bottom of his cock. She could hear him exhale sharply in what was nearly a cry, as his legs twitched beneath him, his fingers knotting themselves further into her hair.

But he only permitted her a brief taste; she moved her mouth along his length but a few times, her throat tightening around him, sucking, before he pulled her head away and sank to his knees himself. Thanduwen wasted no time, grabbing for the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head and wrestling it along his arms and off. As soon as he was freed of it, Solas reached for hers. 

Soon they were naked and pressed against one another, bodies slick with sweat, Solas’ mouth on hers again and hungry and wet, devouring, before dragging along and under her jaw to her neck, down over her breasts….

And kneeling. Tossing, effortlessly, her legs over his shoulders, an arm wrapped around her waist to pull it upwards towards his mouth. And without so much as a pause, tonguing firmly along the crease of her sex, locating with an unmatched deftness the bud of her clitoris and rolling his tongue around it, circling. 

“Haa-a— ahh!”

Her back arched off the floor of the tent, her heels digging into his back, pressing her pelvis more firmly against his face. But he would not be goaded into sloppiness: his tongue was wet but exacting and traced patterns like runes; an ambitious mouth, lapping and licking until every piece of her was pulled taut like a bowstring, edging towards—and he could feel it, too. One more languid lick, slow and full along the lips, before he gently eased her waist back back towards the bedroll. His hands moved to her hips and pull-pushed, twisting—she gave in easily, turning over so that she was positioned on her hands and knees, Solas wasting no time at all (no more hesitance) lining up behind her—

—and they both cried out at once, Thanduwen yelping, Solas nearly shouting, then grunting, groaning as he slid full inside of her, as she pushed her hips backwards against his to accept all him fully.

But they did not speak. Their coupling was brutal: aggressive, impersonal, efficient. She needed it. Too long without him, too long gone empty, and this, this ravaging, was precisely what she had wanted. It was not the same ( _could it ever be?_ ) but for so long he had been her best companion, her lifeline, and this, now, no matter how rough, was what she wanted. Solas’ thrusting was perfectly measured and rhythmic and deep, holding nothing back. She panted and moaned in time with him, could hear him grunting somewhere behind her, each thrust punctuated with a gasp or a pant (if not a shout.) 

It felt more like a goodbye than their exchanged words at Crestwood—the pleasure not quite enough to make them forget their guilt, this carnal intimacy where they could not even look one another in the eye as they rutted. Their shared endearment—vhenan—conspicuously absent from the retinue of cries wrest from their throats. 

She shifted her hips, adjusted her knees, searching and fumbling. It was good and rough and he was close but not there, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. He sensed her contorting, tried adjusting his hips to meet her where she needed, and not quite—still. A hand crept around the curve of her hip and dipped between her legs, middle and ring finger searching out until they find their way up and along her swollen clitoris—and she cried out, sharp and surprised, back arching further, forehead nearly kissed against the bedroll. His fingers on her, sweet and she was aching with exertion already by the time something slides _just_ so and pulls a wail from her that she tried desperately to muffle. (She could not bear to face her companions tomorrow, their questions and concern, if they hear her and Solas shrieking and screwing like alleycats.) But self-control was a struggle, and in the end she had to bury her face in her discarded clothing, all moans muffled, which only gave Solas incentive to thrust harder, pull the volume out of her, the floor out from under her—he bent and she could feel his abdomen against her lower back, his chest pressed against her shoulders, their bodies slick with the heat and sliding over one another with a rhythm and an ease, and his mouth close to her ear, his breath hot on it. She knew what he was going to do long before he did it- she expected that he reveled in keeping her in suspense, waiting, pleasure withheld. She could almost hear his grin in his panting. And then— _teeth_ , a gentle tug at the tip of her ear before his tongue traced the full length of it, and she shuddered, eyes squeezed closed and eyebrows knitted. It was not long, after that: a couple of expertly delivered bites and a handful of rough thrusts, and there was bright and lightning shooting through her, the tent and the bedroll and even Solas melting away in the white as she came, hard, her whole body shaking with the exertion of it. 

 

Trembling and sensitive after, even as her body still rocked with Solas’ thrusting, still hot on the pursuit of his own orgasm, her eyes creaked open—her disoriented gaze met with a flash of white outside the tent. Instantly, she pushed herself upwards, eyes wide and searching (her point of view shifting, forwards and backwards with each push) but she scanned the horizon only for a moment, eyes squeezing closed again as Solas gave one final throaty moan, and within her she could feel him twitching and spilling and it made her lightheaded, breathless, distracted.

The tent was filled with the sound of their twinned, heavy breathing. 

Solas collapsed at her side. She rolled over to face him, and he looked at her wordlessly, lips still parted, chest rising and falling in exaggerated, laborious motions. He reached over and ran his fingers gently along the side of her face, scrubbed clean of pigment, bare. Perhaps, some regret roiling within him. 

But then he rolled onto his back, brought his arm over his face, hiding in the crook of his elbow. Gradually, his breathing slowed—exhaustion lulling him into sleep.

But Thanduwen was wide awake. She turned away from him and propped herself up on both her elbows, staring out the back of the tent where the flaps were still parted and pinned. The purple darkness was just beginning to blush into a bright blue, the promise of morning just beyond the horizon. She squinted, and in the darkness she swore she saw a white flickering atop the crest of a nearby dune.

She glanced briefly at Solas to confirm he was indeed asleep, then grabbed her blanket, wrapping it hastily around her body and creeping out into the dawn. The summit of the dune was not far, and once she had reached the top, she looked out on the desert—and then, there, just to her left, a white form, like a wolf, padding through the sand. 

Without a moment’s hesitation, she hopped, bending her knees and balancing as she slid down the face of the dune. She had seen no other wolves in this desert, but the presence of this creature no longer surprised her, no matter how out of place it seemed. She had seen it before, in far-flung corners of Thedas—always watching her. It looked at her with an intelligence she had not seen in any animal before, as though it was measuring her, somehow.

Cautiously, she extended her hand to it—this was, without question, the closest she had ever come to it. The beast took a few experimental steps closer, and gestured, as if it were sniffing, but she heard no sound of its breath. Appearing neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, it nevertheless turned, and padded off up another cresting dune to the North. Thanduwen followed, never more than three feet behind. As she walked her feet left dimples in the sand, but the beast’s footfalls disturbed not a single grain. 

It was leading her towards something, (or away from…?) she was sure of it. After all these months, all the glimpses, ever since she had joined the Inquisition, she was in the habit of pursuit. But she had told no one, making excuses whenever anyone caught her staring into space or dashing out into the forest. She had not even shared the secret with Solas, with whom she had shared virtually everything.

(She did not know why she kept it from him—he, who perhaps more than anyone could have helped her unravel the mystery of what the thing was, what it wanted. But she did not feel in danger. Something familiar and warm about the proximity, something charged.)

It was pulling her and drawing her in and away, and somehow she knew that the answers which always seemed just beyond her grasp were waiting, this creature not just a creature but a key. She worked hard, pumping her legs, breathing heavy to keep pace with it as it crested the dune—

—but then was gone, vanished, not a trace of it in sight. She turned, revolved around herself, peering in all directions. 

At that precise moment, the sun broke the horizon, kissing the tops of the dunes in shades of ruby and rust. Thanduwen raised a hand to shield her eyes from it’s brightness. But even with the dramatic light of the sun slashing tall shadows out of anything that stood, she could not find the wolf anywhere in the landscape, nor any trace nor hint of where it had gone. It had seemed to quite simply vanish.

(Would it have even cast a shadow?)

She heaved a sigh, and dropped onto the dune, legs crossed beneath her, blanket still tossed around her shoulders. Defeated.

A spell of weariness came over her, pulled her squinting features into a frown. _Fenedhis_ , she was tired. She was tired of pursuits which ended in nothing but failure. She was tired of Corypheus and his scheming, the new and innovative ways he had found to make the world slightly more sinister—of every new horror that seemed to lurk, waiting, each another argument for why the world was not worth saving. And she was tired of waiting for Solas to open to her, to get the honesty she felt she deserved from him; the way that even though she felt closer to him than anyone, he seemed to always be holding her at arm’s length from him. She was tired of missing her family so terribly. She was tired—barely could muster up the energy on any given day to hope, any longer, that any of it would turn out alright.

“Inquisitor,” he said, and she knew without turning who it was. He came closer and stood beside her, fully dressed now, arms folded behind his back.

“What happened this evening was a mistake. It cannot happen again—it must be the last time.”

“I know,” she responded, cutting him off before he could elaborate—she could not bear a second round of his reasons (his excuses.) She did not look at him, kept her gaze fixed on the horizon, but out of the corner of her eye she could see him looking at her with a mixture of surprise and confusion. Perhaps he had expected more of a fight from her, but there was barely any fight left in her, and what little she had left she needed to save for the real enemy.

“Aval’var banal’halam,” he said, a note of sadness in his voice. “I will be with you, to see this task through to its end. But it cannot be like that.”

 

A gasp shakes her. She flailed on the ground, wrestling herself upright, eyes wide and gulping air like a drowning woman. She planted her hands at her sides, fisting the blades of grass in a manic desperation to get her grip on something solid—something that would not slide out from under her—head revolving frantically, trying to place her surroundings, where she’d been dropped now, until—

Birdsong. Their bell-like chirping in the canopy above her. The world—green. And unmalleable. Her wakefulness easily confirmed by the sight of her left arm, severed at the elbow.

She breathed, shakily, an exhale that was more like a sob than a sigh. Reclining, she could feel the earth flush with her body, solid and steady beneath her. Upwards and above her, the leaves of the great oaks danced. The world continuing as it always had, despite her suffering—reliable, in that way, for now.

She had been carried away and backwards into a recollection of a life that she barely even recognized as her own. With each day it grew more difficult to see how the pieces fit, how the years had taken her so far from her self.

( _She remembered what it felt like, it stayed with her always: her mortality thick on her, leaving a taste like metal in her mouth._ )

But that such a life had been hers was undeniable, no matter how incredible it seemed. She reached into the pouch at her waist and removed the small, glass jar, sealed with snowfleur hide, oiled and impermeable. The dye was different—she had long past run out of the tincture Solas had concocted for her—but the jar itself, though inconspicuous, was unmistakable. She held it up above her face and turned it over delicately in her hand. It had been chipped and scratched with wear over the course of the years she had carried it with her. She had kept it even when she had Josephine cover his frescoes in the rotunda, all suggestions that he had ever been there removed from sight (each one a tiny torture) but for this. 

It endured, for it was cherished. She had allowed herself this smallest of reminders. Every morning, the same gestures, tracing the practiced steps of her ritual, removing the seal of the jar with the utmost care (harder, now, than before, one-handed) like handling a precious and ancient artifact. He had given her so much (and yet how much had he taken? Impossible to tally, to settle the score, the years and her arm and her freedom) but he had only ever given her this one material gift—and no matter how sentimental it was, no matter how weak it made her feel, it was probably one of the only things she owned that she truly treasured.

With the exception of the sending crystal, she corrected. But she had not made use of that gift in weeks, not since leaving Wycombe. It lay, willfully ignored, in a pocket of her pack, occasionally, blinking: Dorian reaching out for her across a great distance. She felt like a coward—generally, but especially where the crystal was concerned—because she was fully aware of the hurt it likely caused Dorian to have his messages go unanswered. Even knowing that, however, she could not bring herself to use it. After all, what could she say? Nothing she was willing to say that she hadn’t said before. And the fact that she was out here, alone, chasing ghosts, she knew he would disapprove—or worse, worry about her.

There was nothing to dictate it had to be this way—she did not quite delude herself into that fallacy—but she was confident in her decision that whatever path she had been set on, for the time being, anyway, it was one she ought to walk alone.

This morning, however, the temptation to reach out to Dorian was strong. Even seeing his face—hearing his voice—was such a comfort. But he would only say what he always said. That the penniless rogue did not deserve such anguish, that she had to put her accomplishments in perspective and realize the what good she had done—that she ought to visit him in Minrathous. How she wished she would allow herself to take him up on that offer! But impossible as that visit may have been before, with her vague sense of purpose and directionlessness, it was doubly so this morning.

She was descending into something that the others would have deemed perilous and she knew it. She could practically hear Vivienne’s admonishments, see Cassandra scowling and hear Sera’s alarmed disbelief and concern—poorly cloaked in sarcasm. And rationally, she knew she should heed them, the imaginary warnings of her far flung and distant friends. But somehow, though the danger was clear to her in her mind, she had felt no fear, wandering the world in pursuit of the dark wolf of her dreams—until now. The white wolf and its ability to wrap her in her own recollections (time, she supposed, just as malleable in the Fade as space and form.) But the truth was she was far more frightened by the memories themselves than the being which pulled them out of her and around her. Lying on her back, turning the small jar over slowly in her hand, the pain of the memory burned exquisitely in her like an ember. The feeling was like a hole in her chest, a cavity collapsing in on itself, twisting and swallowing everything else, and it was all she could feel: the weight of her regrets, innumerable.

But the throbbing at the site of her amputation: quelled. Perhaps supplanted by this raw pain, a new pressure in her psyche, crowding it out.

Only that wasn’t it. Because as her right hand turned the jar over a twin shimmering was manifesting, a mist rolling and knitting itself together in a pantomime of sinew and skin. 

It wound itself around her wound at her elbow and extended upwards, shuddering and twitching—indecisive?—as if feeling out the possibilities, guessing at the answer. Thanduwen watched with her heart in her throat, brows knit, as pale forearm slid neatly into fingertips, which brushed the shape of the jar— and though she would have thought it impossible, she could swear she could feel on the manifesting fingertips (which somehow felt like _hers_ ) the small imperfections in the glass, the scratches and chips, just below the ridges of ghostly fingerprints.

An exhale landslid through her and out of her, rumbling and stilted. She watched the ghastly appendage and, swallowing, thought to herself: wave your fingers. And, after a brief delay, fore-and-middle finger gave a limp but unmistakable twitch.

She couldn’t help the nervous laugh that escaped her, watching in awe as (slowly, and not without some difficulty) she held the jar in her right hand and turned the left one over, wrist revolving in the scattered sun.

Her breath came unsteady and mostly through her nose. Her right hand still clutched the jar (a bit too tightly perhaps) but her attention was centered on the left. She stared at the vague digits—when the sunlight hit them they were almost invisible, but in the shadows they could be made out plainly, like trapped smoke or a drop of ink in water, curling and shifting, dissipating and condensing in turns.

It was slow—every second a miracle extended into the next—but she turned the palm upwards towards the sky (fraction by fraction) and extended the arms straight and upwards. She willed her fingers into an experimental twitch, both pathetic and miraculous at once, the hint of the points stretched over by this smoky abstraction of flesh—

—her vision, suddenly clouded without warning: the colors dripping and swirling and reforming into the shape of his face, lit gently in the glow of his Haven residence, intent as he turned her left palm over in his hand—“What do you think it is?”—like a teacher, like Keeper Deshanna, asking her to work out the answers herself before she provided them—withholding the truth from her, even then—from the beginning—

“ _Do not give in to your despair_ ,” and his face contorted in some way she had never seen it, and the words— hers—but not, nothing she had ever said and not with such gravity and depth and _authority_ , she had never possessed it—

—and then the world sliding back into place around and beneath her. And the phantom limb gone. The jar still held suspended, upwards between her and the canopy, but her arm severed again, an unresolved stump. But she did not even have the time to mourn the loss before she saw it—not a stone’s throw away, the white wolf, sat at her feet and gazing at her, its tail still swaying (almost wagging) behind it. 

Slowly, as not to spook it, (as if it were a creature she were really capable of frightening, she chided herself, certain that whatever instincts this thing possessed it could not possibly become frightened enough of her to bolt out of so base an emotion as _fear_ ) she raised herself upwards into a seated position, and moved herself closer. The creature did not flee—indeed, it bowed its head closer.

But as she extended her arms, she felt the faintest of tingling in her long gone fingertips. As her body moved closer to the wolf, it grew stronger, like pins and needles. With a gasp and a start, she realized the apparition of the arm had returned, terribly weak and only where her hand (had it still be attached) would have just brushed fur, but there, faintly: a suggestion of fingertips.

As she had willed them into wiggling before, she did so now. They were faint enough to barely notice, but she saw the digits give a playful twitch.

Almost immediately she withdrew, bringing both arms close to her body and wrapping them around her torso. She was certain she was no longer in the Fade—of all the mages in Thedas, she thought by now she was thoroughly qualified to make that distinction—and yet. And yet this thing, though it must have come through the Veil and followed her, seemed unaffected by the ordinary limitations that spirits typically encountered. 

Which made it both exceedingly powerful, and likely to be exceedingly dangerous.

“I can’t come through unless you open!”

Cole’s voice, unmistakable, the first words he ever spoke to her. But she did not hear the words so much as she remembered them, felt them surface in her mind from the pool of recollection. And how insidious it was! Masking itself in the voice of another, and Thanduwen, unable to tear words or tone apart to dissect meaning or intention, whether this thing aimed to harm her or help her. But she thought of the Augur—

—” _they reflect us as water does the sky, they show us what we wish to be_ ”—

Out loud like Cole’s but Gods, in her head the words were _ringing_. And for the words to have surfaced like that, so quickly, on the heels of her own thoughts of him (warmth, skins, a teacher and a confidant, what would he think of her now, of her venture?) and the space of the Graves, crackling with magic and purpose. Something hungry (was it her? And for what?) and full of teeth (the appetite she’d built) and not clawing but pawing, gently, on the other side of the door—the wolf watching her with humble gentle eyes, her left hand feeling real again and fingers buried in soft warm hair—and after all—

what does she really have left that she hasn’t already lost?

An exhale shaking through her, trembling, and something swallowed (her hesitance?) as fingers run through wild white and closing her eyes, her own voice this time, her own throat forming the words, her volition, irrefutable—

“Okay.”

A deep breath.

“I trust you.”

Deeper.

“Show me.”

The veil so thin here, and she pushes through with the barest nudge (what nudging her? this creature [dragging downwards] pulling) slipping past the curtain and through and then under, colors pitching into black.

 


	2. Fairly Guised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We'll be most formidable, the two of us," she said, almost breathlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little belated for Valentines Day. This chapter is SFW. Elvish translations (accidentally neglected in the previous chapter) will follow at the end.

The room she awoke in smelled of burnt cedar. She could smell it before her eyes even opened, all the while feeling the softness beneath her, the warmth surrounding her. Consciousness dawning, she realized she could not possibly be on the floor; beneath her the unfamiliar surface was too plush to be her own gear.

A bed, then?

For a moment she lingered, eyes willed shut, in the protective and blissful comfort of that space. She was unused to sleeping on a surface so soft, accustomed as she was to her modest bedroll, or the platforms of her Clan’s aravels. Her back ached, presumably from how easily the mattress gave way beneath the weight of her body. But it was warm, and sore though she may be, she nestled herself deeper beneath the cover of the blankets.

But even the warmth of the bed could not dispel reality, creeping in at the corners of her mind as her consciousness stirred. The truth of where she was and why she was there could only be avoided for so long. She awoke to find herself in a warm bed, but also to the irrefutable fact that the world was changed, different, dangerous; there was work to be done. 

Because she knew, or remembered, now, how she had arrived there, and what her eyes would find on waking: the stone hearth smoldering where the fire had dwindled throughout the night; the stiff grid of planks which formed the walls and ceiling of this cabin; the jarring cold of the mountain air should she walk through the door. The architecture of the space, still unseen but completely felt, sank through her. 

_Haven._

Still, this morning was the most peaceful she’d had yet. There were no frightened servants running from her, and the bed beneath her was a welcome change from the cold, unforgiving cobbles of the dungeon floor. 

Even in the shelter of the bed, it occurred to her so vividly: the fear she had felt upon waking in the dungeon. It had been so real, then, though it was strange to imagine now. The dread and the disorientation of finding herself in a foreign setting in the presence of unfamiliar and unfriendly faces, her first morning conscious since the Conclave. 

More frightening, still, the thing she noticed first (and with much greater alarm) was the way that her hand had become bright like a beacon, like light shifting on water, or sun sifting through tree leaves, shimmering, shocking—the entire hand pulsed with a frantic beat like the pounding of war drums, a tremor that moved through her whole body. And occasionally, without any predictable pattern, it would suddenly crackle and hum, the light shuddering with a new fervor, accompanied by the most intense of pains shooting up her arm and through her chest.

_“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.”_

Her attention had been drawn once more to the women. Their faces appeared, if not cruel, prepared to commit cruel acts. (She wondered at, briefly, then dismissed, the idea that they had placed this dancing, menacing mark upon her.)

They spoke, and their accusations were enough to impress upon her the seriousness of her situation. But while in their captivity, she expected from them neither sympathy nor justice, especially as they demanded from her explanations, asked her questions to which she was hopelessly incapable of giving satisfactory answers.

(She had felt, with mounting certainty, that she would die in that windowless, dark room. When she proved unable to satisfy her interrogators, why should they not just slaughter her like an animal? What was one more elf dead to the Chantry? Because little though she knew about it, these two were certainly from the Chantry. She recognized enough of the symbols on their armor to know that much. And they seemed terrified of her, or of this strange mark that had been placed upon her. It was only a matter of time running out, she had though—she would certainly not be the first nor the last elf to die at the hands of humans, at their whim, without even the slightest pretense of justice.)

Even now, days later (as if time alone could resolve the blank space in her memory) she was unable to come up with an explanation for how she had tumbled out of the Fade, nor how she had ended up inside of it to begin with. All she could remember was the commencement of Conclave itself, and then, running…. How had she possibly crossed back and forth safely across the Veil? Had she somehow gone through that aberration in the sky, the Breach itself?

The first time she saw it, Cassandra dragging her out into the daylight, the sight of it nearly dazed her. It made clear the urgency of the accusations she had just moments ago faced, though how anyone could fathom that she was responsible for such a catastrophe, she did not know. It seemed beyond even the most powerful of mages to create such an unthinkable malice as the Breach, a rip in reality’s seams. 

The hole in the sky trembled and crackled, churned around itself, twisting into a vortex which contorted and revolved slowly outward from its epicenter. The size of the cataclysm was beyond comprehension; it felt apocalyptic, as though she had woken to the end of times itself. 

And it was only after all of this had moved through her, leaving her feeling weak and small and defeated, that she heard the screaming. 

She had barely the time to notice the people fleeing and dying around her before the entire Breach clapped and thundered, and the mark on her hand flared violently, and a pain like shards of glass in her veins had whipped through her and brought her to her knees as a taste like metal filled her mouth.

 

Now, though it still glowed with a fierce intensity, her hand caused her no pain. Lying on her back, she spared it only a brief contemplative glance, before swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, and rising. The stone floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she moved across the room, getting dressed. When she was fully clothed, she reached for her staff.

(Not hers, of course, not really. [What had happened to hers? Likely splinters, or worse burnt out embers at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.] This one taken from someone who no longer had need of it, lying at the edge of the river they had walked along.)

Fastening the staff to her back, she set out the door. The cold was brisk and refreshing and clean, and the wind smelled of pine and wood fire. She closed the door to the hut and walked across the courtyard. Slowly, (inevitably) her eyes turned skyward, into the center of the Breach. If it was unfathomable that Cassandra had believed she had caused the anomaly, she found it equally (if not more) unfathomable that Cassandra had placed whatever hope she now had on Thanduwen to seal it. It was practically inconceivable—would have been too incredible to believe, before—

_“Quickly! Before more come through!”_

Her hand had been seized and pulled, and under any other circumstance she would have protested, wrenched it back, a threat of violence and retaliation already bubbling in her mouth—but then the pulse came and shattered all hope of resistance. He stretched her open disfigured palm upwards, and a rush of mana so raw and thunderous ripped through her: like dam gates opening, like the crashing and tumbling and flooding of water as it follows a swift moving current, potential transforming into velocity. It wrenched her spine into something straight and regal, and for a moment as the energy surged and pulsed outwards she could almost see beyond the rift—and the colors were so stupendous they stung her eyes, as something beyond the rift whispered and reached out for her, even as she watched, ( _watching her_ ) startled frozen and straight, as the rift mended itself: threads like silk and the color of rain, the warp and weft knitting itself back together. She could see the Veil so clearly, as it must always really be, omnidirectional and pervasive and weaving its way through everything, and even as it repaired the rift it enfolded them, her and this stranger who had somehow activated her—switched on this thing that a moment ago was killing her. 

And then it was over—and her palm itched and tingled but did not burn with the same pain as before, as if it had been flushed, purged, sated. The relief had been instantaneous, overwhelming. That taste in her mouth and the sense of doom, gone. With no small amount of awe in her voice, she asked, “What did you do?”

“I did nothing,” he said. “The credit is yours.”

She kept her gaze fixed on him, awe ebbing away, yielding skepticism. He was modestly dressed—his clothes were unadorned but highly functional, something she recognized from the nomadic lifestyle of the Dalish. Of course, he looked anything _but_ Dalish—his lack of vallaslin was a dead giveaway, there. But neither did he carry himself like a city elf. She had been taught to think of them as meek creatures, quick to act in deference or humility in front of the shemlen, not out of any actual perceived inferiority so much as it was a survival instinct that came with living among them.

Merely by the way he carried himself, she could tell he was far too proud for that. 

It was hard, then, not to be a bit suspicious of him. “How could I have closed that—that thing?”

“Whatever magic opened the breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand,” he replied. “I theorized the mark might be able to close the rifts that have opened in the breach’s wake. And it seems I was correct.” 

That certainly seemed to please him—although whether that was out of self-satisfaction or the sudden appearance of the faintest glimmer of hope, she could not say. His smile was kind, even if it was a bit smug. She disliked having to admit it to herself, but his presence, however perplexing, made her a little more at ease. He was nothing like the elves she had met before, but even in the absence of that commonality, she felt immediately allied with him at the sight of the staff strapped to his back. 

Small comfort though it was, it was good, in any case, not to be the only mage of the group. Especially next to the Seeker. 

He introduced himself as _Solas_ , and she had to do her very best to fight the grin off her face when she said so. (His parents must have been prescient.) The dwarf, Varric, introduced himself immediately after, and then, the foursome had set off, continuing along the path towards the forward camp. Cassandra seemed to distrust (or at least, dislike) Varric just as much as she mistrusted Thanduwen; perhaps because of that, or because of his wit and his charm, Thanduwen took to Varric immediately. It put her at ease to see someone treating the whole affair with a degree of light-heartedness; his sense of humor, in the face of everything, made their task seem far less bleak.

They were troubled only occasionally by demons—the valley, despite Varric’s warning, was not _quite_ full of them. Not that it brought much comfort. Thanduwen was used to defending herself—she had been required to do so on more than one occasion—but she found the demons much more off-putting than she let on. She was thankful not to be alone. On crossing a frozen pond, there was another, brief scuffle that was too close for comfort; one of the shades had nearly reached her, arm pulled back and preparing to swing before it was struck by a frost spell. The whole of it had frozen solid, and then shattered; green and bright pieces of it drifted upwards on the cold air, like dust motes in the sun. She could see Solas, across the way, standing poised with his hands still on his staff before he straightened. After a glance around, he returned the staff to his back with an elegant but efficient gesture, and approached her.

“Thank you,” she breathed, smiling at him.

He inclined his head, something in the gesture like a bow and a nod at once. “You defend yourself well,” he replied. After a pause, “Have you fought against demons before?”

“No,” she answered, accompanied by a nervous laugh. It felt good to say it; to acknowledge, at least to someone, that this was uncharted territory for her. “I mean, I’ve _seen_ them before, of course, but not like this. Not… not outside of the Fade. I’ve never had to fight them.”

“May I offer a small piece of unsolicited advice?”

She’d only just met him, but already she suspected that ‘unsolicited advice’ was going to be a running theme with him. 

Still, she wasn’t going to decline. “Please.”

He turned to her with a trace of a smile, considering her before he responded. Then, with a tone of tremendous authority, he told her, “Focus on defending yourself first and identify their weakness. Once you have discerned the patterns of their behavior, they should pose little difficulty to you. Demons are predictable far more often than they adaptable.”

She almost laughed again, but forced it back. Such a strategy would require a level-headedness that she undoubtedly did not possess—the idea that she could play it so cool, given the circumstances, was laughable. “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” she said, trying to sound reassured; by the look he gave her in response, he did not seem convinced.

He did not reply immediately. Instead, Solas merely looked at her, his expression curious and his gaze as penetrating as it was unreadable. When he did break the silence, it seemed to have little to do with the advice he’d offered earlier. 

“You are Dalish, are you not?”

The way he said, the inquiry almost _too_ casual, it made her think that the advice he’d offered (if you could call it that) had been just a pretense, meant to lead to this line of questioning, wherever it was going. Strange, wasn’t it—here he was asking her about her past, when she’d just been so curious about his. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes—she could not help but be a little apprehensive—before she answered, “Proudly.”

He seemed to bristle at that, and though she couldn’t be sure, Thanduwen thought she saw him raise an eyebrow. “And where is your clan? Did they send you here?”

“I am my clan’s First,” she replied, watching him carefully, wary. “I was sent to observe the conclave.”

“To spy,” he corrected, his tone ever so slightly snide. “Cassandra was quite clear when she said your presence at the Conclave was _unanticipated_ , to put it politely. It is in part why she is so suspicious of you.”

“Yes,” she answered, trying (without success) to keep the note of irritation out of her voice, “to _spy_. There are mages among the Dalish, but the war between the Mages and the Templars has nothing to do with us. Keeper Deshanna wanted to make sure it stayed that way.” She glanced up the path, where Cassandra and Varric hiked ahead of them, deep into the mountains, closer towards the Breach. “I do not think she foresaw what I would be dragged into.”

“It would not be the first time your people lacked such wisdom.” He turned away from her, following Cassandra and Varric up the mountain path. “You should count yourself lucky to be alive.”

It had felt like a slap to the face. For a moment she stood, stunned by the flippant tone of his insult, but she did not hesitate before following him, beside him again in a few strides, matching her pace to his. When she caught up to him, her tone was incredulous; she did nothing to try to reign in her anger. “You don’t wear the vallaslin. Were you trained in a Circle, then? Is that what makes you so _enlightened_ , capable of such false accusations?”

“I am self-taught,” he replied icily. He seemed nearly as offended at the suggestion that he’d trained in a Circle as she had by his much more forthright insult. “And my _accusations_ , I can assure you, have plenty of truth to them.”

“What could you possibly know about it?” she persisted. “What have you heard, other than the rumors they spread in the cities?”

He deflected with a stiff response. “I have wandered many roads in my time, crossed paths with your people on more than one occasion.” His words were tactful, but in his tone was an undercurrent of condescension, disappointment. What must they have done to him, she wondered, to earn such scorn? Trying to keep the sneer off her face—though it hardly mattered, as he couldn’t be bothered to even glance in her direction—she thought to herself, _Probably too much unsolicited advice._ (More right than she could have known.) 

They had nearly caught up with their companions. Without turning to face them, Varric sighed, exaggerated and audible. Apparently their bickering was close enough now for him to overhear. He called over his shoulder, “Can’t you elves just play nice for once?”

Thanduwen narrowed her eyes at the back of his head, before turning back to Solas. “Crossed paths?” she asked, her voice laced with cynicism.

The tone did not go unnoticed by him. He spared her only a passing glance out of the corner of his eye, but when he spoke, he did not seem to be much effected by it. “I sought merely to share my knowledge with them, but their superstitions would permit no alternative interpretation of the past than their own.” Then, as a final still, he practically drawled, “It is fortunate indeed that the Inquisition was not so narrow minded when my help was offered.”

“ _Superstitions?_ ” 

Without missing a beat, he responded. “An appropriate description for your people’s beliefs about Elvhenan. They are rarely based in fact, half-truths like whispers in the dark, lies held onto so dearly and for so long that any challenge to their veracity is met with fierce resistence, if not violence.”

That stopped her in her tracks, mouth open in disbelief. The Breach was a tumult above them, but for the first time since she’d seen it, Thanduwen wasn’t thinking about it at all. 

It had taken her weeks to make the journey from the Free Marches to the Conclave, and much of that time she had spent longing for home. Now, to have her family and her traditions insulted—and not even by one of the shemlen, but by another elf!—was far too much to bear coolly. Especially not when he spoke with such disdain, and his cool indifference to her outrage.

A part of her, of course, was curious, although she would not be able to admit this to herself until later. What did he think he knew with such certainty, and how had he even arrived at such conclusions? She wanted to know what he thought he knew. Proud though she was of what little heritage the Dalish held onto, she had always been hungry for more. A fascination beginning to bloom in her, a curiosity; a seed planted.

But her indignation made her far from capable of recognizing those feelings now. “How—how _dare_ you,” she spluttered, coming up alongside him. “If we had not recovered the lore, kept to the old ways, no one would, and there would be nothing left. It is a small miracle that we have held onto what we have, and you would—you would _criticize_ us for that? What is it you are accusing us of—for doing a less than perfect job at a nearly impossible task, or for caring so deeply about what success we’ve had?”

Again, he did not bother to look at her before responding, his tone dry, but a faint irritation beginning to rise in it. “One would think that, if you really held your culture in such high regard, any offers to share in more of it would be met with enthusiasm, instead of arrogance and refusal.”

 _Arrogance?_ She nearly laughed. Who was he, to be making accusations of arrogance? She was so frustrated with him, exasperated, insulted; perhaps what vexed her more than anything else was that he did not even have the decency to turn his head and look her in the eye while he degraded her. 

She would have _none_ of it. If she was going to try to close the rift—if she was going to possibly _die_ in the attempt—she was going to set this one straight before she no longer had the chance.

He hurried his pace, but she pursued him. As soon as she closed the space between them, she seized Solas' bicep in her hand, pulling him back to look at her. “Whatever you think of the Dalish—” she began, voice sharp, but then he turned to look at her. There was no alarm in his expression, but he leveled her with nothing more than an elegantly raised eyebrow, a cool authority in his gaze. 

Her stomach dropped. 

It was just a look, that was all, but it had stopped her mid-sentence. In his glance and self-composure she sensed a confidence that might have bordered on arrogance if the look did not also suggest that it was backed by a thorough competency. The realization struck her, suddenly, sinking into her with the weight of a boulder: he had come to Cassandra’s aid because he believed he could help, but he had braved the danger (she was sure of it) because he knew, if the Chantry turned on him, that it was fully within his capacity (his _power_ ) to escape her and her whole regiment of Chantry soldiers if it ever came to that. She posed as little a threat to him as a nug. With his eyes darting between her hand on his arm and her face, he almost looked amused at her feeble attempt to admonish him.

And it coiled and tightened in her, a feeling that terrified her (and, to her great shame, mildly aroused her at the same time.) She filed the thought away for later: however this would end, however long the Breach took to close (however long it took for her to _win her freedom back_ ) this one—Solas—whether or not he intended it to be so, would prove far more dangerous to her, she was sure, than the Seeker Pentaghast.

She swallowed.

“Whatever you think of the Dalish…” she repeated her tone softer, her mouth hanging open, at a loss for words, “…I am glad you are here, falon. Dalish tradition aside, you seem to know more about the mark than anyone. And it is good, to have someone other than the Seeker to travel with. I feel…” her voice trailed off, how to express it? This feeling of being, still, despite how utterly wrong he was about her people (in time, she was confident, she would correct him), despite the insults and the vague fear that he inspired in her, somehow the safety of being, in his company, “...less alone.”

He watched her for a moment without responding, arched eyebrow lowering to fall in line with it’s twin, dismissal giving way to… curiosity? For a time, he merely watched her, with a gaze that seemed to eviscerate, to cut right through her. Then, as if to signal his satisfaction with whatever answers he had gleaned from her visage, his expression softened, and he nodded. “I am pleased to share in your company myself, da’len. Perhaps, we may revisit this discussion under less dire circumstances, but for now, we mustn't tarry. There is a rift nearby ahead. It should pose you no difficulty, however, if you are as… _tenacious_ in dealing with the rift as you have proven to be in other matters.” He directed a pointed glance at her hand, which remained still clutched around his bicep.

She released him, instantly, realizing she’d been clinging. The tip of her ears grew rosy, but she did not look away from him, instead pulling her mouth into a crooked grin. A lilt in her voice, she asked, “Are you going to hold my hand this time?”

He chuckled. “I do not believe that will be necessary. The mark is yours. You should require no further assistance.”

 

That was three days ago. Afterwards—after the rift at the Temple had been sealed—they made the long trek back to Haven. She had been quiet for most of the journey, despite Varric’s cajoling, or the tone of Cassandra and Leliana’s voices, which made it plain, though she could not make out their words, that they were talking about her. One rift sealed but, as she saw it, only a small victory—the massive churning tear of the Breach in the sky made that abundantly clear. She was not foolish enough to think that, too, could be resolved with a mere wiggle of her fingers.

 _No further assistance_ , he had said. That was worth a dry laugh, especially here, in the cold, facing the Breach which remained, even days later, utterly unaffected by the rifts she had closed. If anything it appeared more menacing, but perhaps that was a trick of the mind. To close it, she knew she would need plenty of assistance—not just from Solas but from anyone who would offer it.

Not that anyone else had seemed to share that sentiment. Since she had woken in Haven after closing the first rifts hardly anyone dared look at her, never mind speak to her to offer assistance in any future endeavors. The servant who had been tending her hearth had practically fled when Thanduwen had woke. On that same morning, outside the cabin, she had found an entire crowd of the faithful gathered; waiting for what, she could not say. It had seemed they had gathered merely to gawk at her. Days before the same people had looked at her with nothing but hatred in their eyes, holding her responsible for the slaughter of everyone in attendance at the Conclave. Now, they looked at her like their savior, with all the respect, deference, and fear that entailed. Anything she did to remedy that perception only made things worse. 

They looked at her like, at any moment, she might perform a miracle—in a way, she supposed, she already had. But their faith in her made her feel like a charlatan. 

Which was not to say that she was not grateful to no longer be living in the midst of an angry mob, waiting to exact their warped version of justice upon her—she was. But though she could not imagine how any of what had happened at the Conclave was her own doing, she was just as surprised that no one pressed her, any longer, for details on what might have actually transpired, or who might be to blame. Those questions lingered with her, surfacing now and again, and always accompanied by the memory of the ruined Temple.

As they had drawn closer to it—herself, Varric, Solas, and Cassandra—the path had taken a sharp turn downwards, and they descended deeper into the Valley. Somehow it had seemed both quieter and colder as they approached, but even the sense of foreboding she felt—significant as it was—paled in comparison to the smell, so powerful and rank it overwhelmed all else. She could not identify it at first; but as they rounded a corner where the entrance to the Temple used to stand, the sight of it made abundantly clear what that smell, both sour and smoky, came from. 

Charred flesh. 

The air still hummed with the spent mana that had razed the Temple to the ground and ended the lives of all the diplomats, freedom fighters, religious leaders and protectors who had congregated there. Not even the Pride demon they later encountered at the rift was as awful as the destruction, bodies burned bare, hands clutched to faces frozen in an expression of horror. 

In some of the last moments she could recall before waking up in the dungeon, she had been among them.

It was too terrible to think about for very long, so, as she always did, she tried to put the thought out of her mind. Unconvincingly, she told herself that the only thing to do, now, was to help those that remained: to do her very best to discover what had happened, and hold those responsible accountable for their actions. Those kinds of thoughts preoccupied her, and so distracted was she that had Varric not spoken up, she may very well have stumbled into him.

“So, you’ve gone from death row to Andraste’s Herald in the span of one day. That’s got to be a lot to process—how are you holding up?”

His presence surprised her—she had, after all, nearly walked right into him—but the surprise faded quickly to warmth, spreading through her as she realized whom it was that she’d nearly run down. Here, at least, was someone who would still talk to her like an ordinary person. Still, his words twisted her features before she even had the chance to smile in greeting. He was right—the change had come quickly, but she had hoped that, maybe, with equal expediency, her new title might wear off, or that she might lose that reputation. 

With every passing hour, that hope seemed increasingly futile. 

“I’m not sure I like it.”

Varric laughed, and as always, the sound of his mirth softened her, if only a little. “I’m not sure Hawke liked it either, when they started calling her Kirkwall’s Champion,” he responded, “but you’re riding with an extremely devout crowd these days. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant. They need to believe it—or at least, want to believe it badly enough that there isn’t much you can do to convince them otherwise.”

“Somehow I don’t think the Chantry’s prophet would have selected an elven mage as her Herald,” Thanduwen replied, dryly. “I’m _doubly_ undesirable. I don’t even sing the Chant. And if, despite that, I really was what they say I am, one would think Andraste might have given me a little more guidance, instead pushing me back through the Veil without any inclination as to how to proceed. Unless, of course,” she added, “the prophet has exceedingly peculiar sense of humor.”

Varric laughed again, his whole body moved with it. “You really don’t know how the Chantry works, do you, green eyes? If you had shown up with instructions, that would be _too_ convenient—they don’t like that either. If it was that easy then no one would have believed you were Andraste’s anything. They’d simply burn you for being a heretic.” 

A vulgar (and blasphemous) comment was on the tip of her tongue, but Varric continued before she had a chance to say it: “I bet it’s got Chuckle’s small clothes in a twist, too. And rightly so! A Dalish elf, of all people, comes tumbling out of the Fade with just the thing that can save Thedas, and immediately any sign of her general elfiness are struck from the record. No one bothers to consider that you just might believe one of your own gods sent you. Bet they’d wipe off your tattoos too if they could.”

Absentmindedly, she touched her vallaslin. He was right, of course, but his comments surprised her—not because she hadn’t considered them, but because she had never expected to hear someone else give voice to the same thoughts, especially from someone who was not an elf himself. They had known each other for only a few days, and his observation—his compassion, no matter how wrapped up in humor it was—touched her deeply. Varric was proving himself to be one of her greatest allies, perhaps even great friend. But she was so overcome by something like gratitude (the relief of being seen, clearly, or understood) that all she could respond with was a sheepish grin and a shrug, his empathy leaving her speechless.

“You are getting along, right?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “With Chuckles, I mean. Seemed like a bit of a bumpy start, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”

“I think so?” she responded, squinting a little. “I guess. It’s too soon to tell. It’s funny, even though he’s an elf—and apparently not from an alienage—he’s just as condescending about the Dalish as the Men are.”

It was Varric’s turn to frown, then. “Listen, I wouldn’t take it to heart. He’s in a tight spot with those in charge—an elven apostate! In a Chantry settlement!—but you can tell just by watching him he doesn’t think too highly of anyone or anything but himself. I know,” he joked, “because I’m the same way. But I certainly don’t hold it against you. One of my closest friends back in Kirkwall is Dalish, and she’s one of the finest people I know. In any case, what was it he said—that you’d come to regret meeting me in time? So do you?”

“Quite the opposite, Varric,” she replied, tilting her head and favoring him with her kindest smile. “I’m grateful.”

“See?” he said, grinning wide. He gave her a gentle shove with his elbow. “Don’t worry too much about anything that comes out of his mouth.” Then, after a moment of consideration, “Except, you know, the important stuff. Like how to close the Breach. Or how to stabilize… whatever that thing on your hand is.”

She laughed; partially in relief, partially in unease. She raised her hand out in front of her and they both watched the light that danced outward from her palm. “I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted without him, to tell you the truth. It’s a good thing Adan was watching me until I met the two of you in the mountain pass.”

“Adan?” Varric practically choked. “You’re joking, right? Adan was in over his head—and he’ll be the first to admit it. Chuckles did all the heavy lifting. From what I hear, the only advantage Adan had over him was that he at least treated you like a patient, instead of an alchemy experiment.” 

Her expression twisted, eyebrows drawn towards one another, the corners of her mouth turned downwards as her gaze focussed on the mark once more. Solas had asked her to visit him today, to give him the opportunity to check the mark once more, to make sure it was stabilized. She supposed she’d find out for herself how true Varric’s words were regarding his bedside manner, but the truth was, she didn’t really doubt it, based on the little she already knew about him.

Varric asked, casually, “Does it bother you? The mark, I mean.”

“The pain not so much as the questions,” she replied. She turned her wrist over as she mused aloud. “I can’t help but wonder… all those people at the Conclave—many of them stronger, or wiser, even braver than me—and yet I’m the one who survived. And ended up with this inexplicable… thing.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” he was quick to respond. “Guilt won’t bring them back, or make the answers any easier to come by. But living with those questions, even if they are never answered—it _will_ get easier. It’ll still occasionally keep you up at night, and on other occasions require pint of spiced mead to remedy, but it will get easier.”

She was unassuaged. Her next words came out meandering and hesitant, on the edge of a confession that brought back too keenly the images that had haunted her. “Between the Temple, and the path up the mountainside… Varric, I… our clan has had to defend itself before, of course, but I…” A pause, a sigh.

“I’ve never seen so many dead before.”

Varric looked at her sympathetically, for which she was grateful. He had run up the mountain path, through the Temple, defended their troops from the Pride demon without so much as a flinch of hesitation. But now he had softened, and he looked at her with understanding and compassion. 

(She was, once more, a bit overcome by how grateful she was that she had met him.)

“That… won’t get easier,” he said, and by the tone of his voice she could tell he was sorry to say it. “Even after everything I’ve seen in Kirkwall, it still isn’t easy for me. Let me give you some advice: if it does get easier, it’s unnatural, and something else is getting worse. Going wrong. Your character, maybe, I don’t know, if all the people who die start to seem like an acceptable cost. Trust me, kid, that’s what turns you into a monster. It’s a fine line to walk between hero and villain. There’s a reason it’s not a popular job.” As if to lighten the tone the conversation had taken, he punctuated his last words with another playful shove. “You up for it?”

She favored him with a small grin, her tone wry as she replied. “I’m not sure Cassandra’s giving me a choice.”

“That, my friend, we have in common.” He patted her on the back as he said goodbye, though at his height, his hand reached only just above the small of her back—and that at a stretch. Still, it was a comfort. “Listen, I’ve got to go take care of some business, but I’ll be around later if you need me.”

“Thanks, Varric.”  “Anytime, Herald.”

 

She should have gone straight to see Solas, then, still warmed by her encounter with Varric and while the day was still young. But she could not bring herself to do it. He was only right around the corner, but something kept her away... probably, at least partially, the intensity of feeling he inspired in her. (Warm and cold in turns, welcome and dread…) Thinking about him made her furious; he had been so _rude_ to her, and his opinions, given the circumstances in which he had chosen to voice them, had been totally uncalled for. Still, they had aroused in her a curiosity that she could not deny. She wanted to hear his theories about Elvhenan for herself—even if only, she reasoned with herself, to pick them apart. As Clan Lavellan’s first, well-versed in her people’s lore, she felt fairly qualified to do so. Still, there was no denying the way that he _fascinated_ her. It had arisen so naturally, something both magnetic and propulsive, but coming and going in waves with bouts of equally strong repulsion. (Towards him? Or towards the intensity of feeling he evoked in her? Or towards herself for succumbing to it? Such terrifyingly vast emotions, like oceans—)

Unable to proceed to her appointment with such a tempest of conjectures occupying her thoughts, she walked instead through the wooden gates of the small settlement and set out for a walk along the shore of the frozen lake. Last night had swept in a new covering of powdery snow, which blanketed the paths and dusted the pines, and the quiet, stark beauty of the landscape pulled her out of Haven. She spent the afternoon climbing the pine trees (their generous, low-hanging boughs; ladder-like) and marveling at the mountains (massive! Surrounding and encircling like cupped hands of Gods) and wandering into glens of wild rams (scattering at her approach) and hearty shoots of elfroot—peeking through the snow, valiant, reaching upwards, even here.

It had utterly captivated her. Her Clan had always stayed too close to the coast to travel anywhere that got so cold, and she welcomed the opportunity to investigate the way it transformed the wilds near the settlement. She marveled at the way the wind sculpted it, leaving behind impressions of serpentine shapes and sculpted dunes, just like the sands on the beaches of the Amaranthine Coast. When a strong enough breeze kicked up, it whisked the lightest dustings of it out of the trees, glittering in the afternoon sun. On some of the boughs of the pines, the snow had melted, only to freeze again along each individual needle; when the wind stirred them they would jingle against one another, a sweet and clear sound.

Such delight it inspired in her, and such a welcome reprieve from the accusations and expectations of others (whom less than three days ago had all been strangers) that she hardly noticed (or did she? Willfully ignoring) the sun tracing its slow arc across the sky, then sinking, dipping closer to the earth and stretching the shadows of the trees and the mountains longer until the darkness became irrefutable (impossible to ignore as the sky bled red and twilight descended.) 

And then she remembered (thought had she ever really forgotten?) her promise to Solas.

No time had been set for their meeting, but at this hour her lateness seemed a foregone conclusion, not worth arguing. Whether she arrived now in ten minutes or twenty or even forty, she would still be well overdue. But the excuse—any excuse—to run without the feeling of being pursued, to run for running’s sake, brought a smile to her face. Soon, all thoughts of lateness or repentance (or even the Temple of Sacred Ashes) were pushed out-of-mind by the stride of her legs. Just the feel of the ground on the soles of her feet, and the cold air filling her lungs, hair blown back from her face—so much space, here, to roam. (For now—maybe not for much longer—she was still free to do so.)

By the time she reached the settlement, the sun had already dipped below the horizon. Haven was alive with the busy work of its inhabitants: soldiers Cullen had finally released from their training, meals being prepared, fires springing up in hearths and pits. As the world grew dark, the mark on her hand only became more evident; the citizens, while not wary so much as awestruck, gave her a wide berth as she made her way to Solas’ hut. She was only slightly out of breath, hair windswept, body flush with exertion when she reached his doorstep. She raised her hand to knock, but something stopped her, a distraction in the corner of her eye. 

She turned her head. At the far edge of the settlement, where the timber wall gave way to the natural defense of mountains’ arms, stood a small wolf, unthreatening, white. (Watching?) Her eyes narrowed. She had not been in Haven long, but long enough, certainly, to recognize that it was unusual for wildlife to come this close. Her mouth opened—

But she was startled from her reverie by the sound of the door swinging open, eliciting a small gasp of surprise from her as she was confronted by Solas, framed by his door, looking most surprised. Apologies were already gurgling like a stream to her lips, but he broke the silence first: “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”

 _Never_ right on the tip of her tongue, but unspoken. (And why? Because of this intensity? Already earning him a place in that hallowed space of the eternal, those things that are always carried, even after the [inevitable] parting? Ridiculous) “No,” replied instead, “just remembering other things.”

He quirked her a smile. “Such as?”

“The woods! If you can call them that. The sight of the mountains, the howl of the wind. The cold is so… clear.”

Only then did she notice the pigment staining his hands, the brush pinched between his fingers, the small pad of parchment set on the floor beside his bedroll.

“Is now a bad time?”

“Not at all,” he said, opening the door wider to allow her to enter, wiping his hands on a small rag. “Come,” he said, hand indicating towards the bed roll, inviting her, “Sit.”

The cabin was one of the several set aside for communal lodgings. Solas’ bedroll was on the floor, near the far wall, but the room was filled with a half dozen cots, all of which she was relieved to note were currently unoccupied. She was thankful for the opportunity to speak with him without having to worry about who might overhear. 

They crossed the room and sat cross-legged, facing one another. “May I?” Solas asked, extending his hands forward. She nodded, slowly uncurling her fingers and extending her left hand towards him, palm upwards.

(Was it her imagination? Or did it glow [almost twinkle] just so when his own hands came forward, when his fingertips just touched—)

“Does it cause you any pain?” he asked, fingertips feeling gently along knuckles and joints. 

“Only a little,” she replied, watching his face as he examined her. (Studied her? Varric was right, his gaze so focused, academic.) “It hasn’t been nearly as bad as it was before we closed that first rift.”

“We?” he asked, favoring her with a brief glance, before returning his gaze to her (mangled?) limb.

“You helped,” she cajoled. She would have sworn he almost smiled.

“You give me far too much credit, da’len.”

But that wasn’t true. She _felt_ its falseness, and remembered, suddenly, what Varric had told her. “I think I haven’t given you enough,” she said. “Varric told me that it was you, not Adan, that kept the mark from killing me while I was unconscious.”

“Adan and I were both powerless to stop the mark from spreading,” he was quick to reply. “For a time, healing magic and minor wards helped slow its progress, but by the time you woke you were beyond any help I could give.”

“But what help you gave was enough,” she said, “because I did wake up, eventually. I owe you my thanks.”

“You can thank me,” he responded, wryly, eyes trained fixedly on her hand, “if we manage to seal the Breach, and if you survive it.”

The casual tone with which he spoke of the Breach (of her survival [of her death]) startled her. As she fought to keep the shock of it off her face, he turned over her hand in silence.

It made her uncomfortable; his ministrations did not feel quite as clinical as she thought they should. She liked too much the look of his fingers in the light. Despite his words his hands were gentle as they moved over her own, brushing and prodding around the mark in a way that was (no doubt unintentionally) at least, a little bit, sensual. She kept talking to fill the space with sound—the silence felt far too intimate.

“Do you have any idea what it is?”

“Several,” he replied quickly, “but none I am prepared to share just yet. There is insufficient evidence to support any of them, and I do not wish to cause you undue alarm with my musings.” He paused, before asking her, “What do you think it is?”

“I… don’t know,” she responded. “It’s clearly some kind of magic. But not to do with me. As if—even though it’s my hand, what people call my mark, it doesn’t really belong to me. I know that. I can feel it’s… foreignness on me all the time. But it’s not unpleasant, just… unfamiliar. Not mine.”

She looked up to find him looking back at her, listening with such scrutiny and intensity in his eyes that she couldn’t help herself from diverting her gaze just as quickly, eyes returning to the mark on her palm.

“And it’s … somehow connected to the Veil. It’s not a coincidence it closed the rift… in addition to the fact that I can’t get it to do anything else. And… because it doesn’t hurt so badly anymore. As if the pain was just all this blocked, choked magic that had built up in the thing and closing the rift some how… discharged it. Right after the rift was sealed it hardly hurt at all. And I think it glowed less.”

When she had finished he was still looking at her with that intensity, and she felt it so heavily upon her, the weight of being the focus of his attention. All she could manage in reply was a sheepish grin, and a shrug of her shoulders. (Sheepish—so perfect a description with his gaze nearly… predatory.).

“That all sounds very silly, doesn’t it?”

There was a pause, and his face softened, and he favored her with a small smile. “No, da’len, it does not.” While saying it, he curled her fingers into a gentle fist, and guided her hand back into her own lap, removing his own. 

“You are correct. The mark has stabilized. I do not believe it will require any further treatment. For the present, it no longer puts you in any peril.”

“But do you have any idea how to remove it?”

“If I did, would you expect me to reveal it?” he asked, with a quirked smile. “Do not be so eager to be rid of it while it remains essential to the task at hand. Perhaps in time a solution may present itself; for now, you are the divine hero of the people, their Herald, and the mark will be necessary in the days to come.”

“Whatever the mark is, I’m not what they say I am.” Her response was immediate and instinctual, her lips curled into something like a snarl as she spat the words out.

And it surprised him—she could tell by the way he looked at her, with heightened interest. “They will say it, nonetheless. They need it to be true. Do you not, in some small part, wonder yourself?”

“No, I know myself,” she said, looking at him directly. “I know that my actions are my own, my successes as as my mistakes. And I think believing otherwise would make me… foolish, or cruel. Or irresponsible. No matter how politically convenient it is for Josephine to say so.”

Solas’ posture remained perfect: his hands were resting neatly on his knees, his back straight as an arrow as he spoke. “Would you feel the same way, I wonder, if they said you were a herald of your own Gods?” He asked the question without judgement, but his choice of words ( _your own_ ) once again punctuating the distance between them.

“I suppose,” she answered, glancing at him discretely. ( _Your own_ , he had said, making clear they were not _his_.) “I don’t know, I think so. I just don’t think much will be accomplished by force of feeling alone. Even if they were saying that I was sent by the Creators, a Herald of June—or a Herald of Mythal, more likely, the _Protector_ —I don’t think it would make me comfortable, or reassured. Actually it would probably make me feel worse. More burdened, I think.”

That had done something to him—moved him some way. His posture and his expression had not changed, nothing in his body language betrayed him; but his gaze was distant, and she felt measured again, tested. (That push and pull, magnetism and propulsion: how one moment their interactions could be warm and amiable, and in the next, how they could become almost strangers to one another. When he became strange[r] to her. How quickly he could vanish, or remove himself, to someplace else, someplace _other than_.) 

She looked at him, a bit wary, searching for any trace of where he had gone off to, or why. Her voice, soft: “Thank you. For not seeing me that way.”

His gaze shifted; she felt seen again, instead of seen past. “How can you be certain that I do not?” His face softened (something melting) and he favored her with a small smile (something restrained.) 

“You’d have to have Gods, to believe they had sent me,” she laughed (something blossoming). “And forgive me for saying so, but you really don’t seem the type. For which I am… very grateful.” Then she paused, her mouth settling into a line, and she looked away from him as she added, “But while we are on the subject of _my_ Gods…” 

“Ah,” he said, by way of comprehension. “Our disagreement in the Valley. Perhaps I owe you an apology. My behavior was inappropriate. My personal feelings about the Dalish aside, that was not, perhaps, the best time or place to voice them.”

At that, she could do nothing to keep the shock, and the frustration, off her face. 

“No, it—I’m not upset about _how or when_ you chose to tell me about those feelings, I’m upset about the feelings!” Her eyebrows were knitted, and her tone was both perplexed and frustrated at once. For a moment, it actually had her at a loss for words. She brought her fingers to her face, studying _him_ now, before asking, “Can I be honest with you?”

He turned his head slightly, giving her a suspicious look. “Were you being something other than honest before?”

Her eyes widened—she thought again of the feeling of his hands on hers—but only shook her head, and did not deign his inquiry worthy of any further response. “I want to listen, to you. I want to hear what you have to say, what you claim that the Dalish were—what is it you think?—too _headstrong,_ or whatever, to hear. But this—this thing you’re doing, where you make me feel inferior because I am one of them—it has to stop.”

She did not mention that one of the reasons she wanted to listen to his stories so badly, beyond her genuine curiosity, was that she thought it might somewhat ease the weight of the homesickness that was already swelling within her. To hear about Elvhenan, even if from the perspective of an outsider, might bring her some comfort. But he did not need to know that.

He looked genuinely surprised by her words. “Are you certain that is what you want? And what if I present a fact contrary to your beliefs?”

Now she squinted to match her knitted eyebrows, her whole face scrunching. “I am a free-thinking individual, Solas. I can decide for myself whether to believe you or not. There’s no harm in simply listening. I’m not going to start a cult and seize control of the Arlathven and rewrite my people’s history or traditions because of it, but I do want to hear what you have to say.”

It was his turn to look suspicious, but at what particular part of her protest, she could not tell. Somehow, by the look he gave her, she strongly suspected it was the part about her being free-thinking. But then, he nodded, as if giving in.

“Then you would be unlike any other Dalish elf I have ever encountered.”

“No,” she said, immediately, lifting an index finger in protest and admonishment. “No, this is exactly what I’m talking about. I am _exactly_ like the rest of the Dalish you’ve met, and you are not going to think of me as an _exception._ Do you want to know what the real difference is between me and the other Dalish that you’ve met?”

His expression had changed, melted from suspicion into something else—fascination, perhaps, colored with amusement. 

“Enlighten me.”

“I’m _here,_ ” she said, her palms coming to the floor to literally pat the ground beneath her for emphasis. “I’m _safe,_ relatively speaking. I do not have to worry about being driven from my home, or about someone hunting down the herd of halla I rely upon to survive. I do not have to worry about slave raiders coming to our camp in the night and stealing our children. These are things that _happen,_ Solas. And they happen because of outsiders. So I’m sorry that you do not feel that you were treated with the respect you deserved—though that entitlement is a bit of a mystery to me—but I will not apologize for my people chasing a outsider out of their territory before listening to his stories, because outsiders almost always mean danger. No matter how knowledgable, or well-spoken, or…” and here, she gestured vaguely at him, at a bit of a loss for words, “…fairly guised they may be.” 

But no matter how well she felt she had articulated her position—no matter how convincing she thought she had been—she could not tell how seriously Solas had taken her, because when she looked up at him again, his lips were curling. He was _grinning._

“Fairly guised?”

She cleared her throat, straightening her posture.

“Well, yeah, in a manner of speaking. From a… an objective point of view. You’re…” she cleared her throat again, flashed him a pained smile; abruptly changed the course of the conversation. She prayed it would be enough to keep the blush from creeping further up her neck than it already had. She pointedly looked away from him as she continued.

“If you say things like that, in front of the—” she bit back _shemlen,_ “—humans, the worst of them will just see it as a good enough reason to believe they can think whatever outlandish things they want, about all elves, not just the Dalish. As more evidence that we are… _less than._ ” And then sighed, the weight of her next words a burden she was not quite prepared to deal with, no matter how much of a reality it was quickly becoming. “After all, we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck here with each other.”

When she dared lift her gaze to look back at him, he was still smiling; but the smile was kinder.

“Very well.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised. It seemed too easy.

He nodded. “Ir abelas, da’len. My behavior was both unkind and thoughtless. I will endeavor to be less of both in the future.”

His elvish was spectacular. Perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. Though she did not like to admit it to herself, that fact instantly made her more credible to her (and, every so slightly, more attractive; something about being apologized to in the language she loved so deeply—even if it had been reduced to fragments—making it feel, almost, more sincere.) 

He had surprised her, and she only found herself capable of nodding in response, passing her gaze around the room at anything but him. She found herself confused; in all honesty, she had expected more of a fight from him. It all seemed to have been settled almost too neatly. She wondered if she had really convinced him—she supposed only time would tell.

She turned back to him, favoring him with a small, forced smile. “Very well.” Then, with one easy gesture she rolled onto her feet and rose upwards, and turned towards the door. 

She had crossed the room by the time she heard his voice again.

“Da’len.” He stood, breathed. “What you said in the valley, when you spoke of being less alone—you are right, of course. It is good, to be looked at with kindness and respect, instead of fear or dismissal. As an elven apostate, that is rare—as you surely understand.” He surveyed her for a moment, before adding, “I have decided to stay, at least until the Breach is closed.”

Her hand was still on the frame of the door when she turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised. “I didn’t know that was in doubt.”

“Is it that surprising?” he asked, approaching her from across the room. “We have had our disagreements, you and I, but one thing we can agree on, I think, is our opinions regarding the Circles of Magi. As a fellow apostate, you understand my caution.”

The possibility of him leaving, frightening as it was, had been dashed as soon as it had been introduced to her. Even so, she did not like to imagine the Inquisition without Solas as a part of it; nor could she fathom how to begin to proceed, to try closing the Breach without his expertise. His admission left her more confused than relieved, and partially because his excuse—his reason for leaving—was suspect. 

He seemed much too confident to be shaken by such a mundane threat. 

She watched at him thoughtfully, and when she responded, her words came slowly. “Caution, yes, that I understand,” she replied. “But I… I think I need you, or your knowledge, to do this right.” Her mouth quirked up in a mischievous smile as she added, “So we’ll never let them take you.”

“We?” he asked, again, as bemused as he had been before by her use of the plural pronoun. He had crossed the room and now stood close enough that she needed to tilt her head upwards to look him in the eye.

“You and I,” she said. “Unkindnesses aside, I’ve got to repay you, for saving my life—twice, by my count. So we’ll look after one another,” she concluded. There was a heat, threatening to flush her face at her own boldness; but a smile split her face. “I’d prefer a _Dalish_ accomplice, of course,” she teased, beaming at him, “but you’ll do.”

He seemed to consider her, for a moment, a smile playing at his lips. She did not break beneath it. 

“Thank you,” he replied, bowing his head slightly in acknowledgement. When he raised it again he was looking at her curiously; his lips twitched as if in indecision before he spoke. “For your offer. And your… flexibility. While I may not be your ideal accomplice, perhaps, in time, you will come to find my company far more _stimulating_ than that of any of your previous Dalish partners. I am, after all, as you said, so _fairly guised._ ”

Her eyes widened, her grin faltering in surprise, then broadening in delight. The blush that she had so arduously fought off her face before came back with a vengeance. “That would prove quite the challenge, lethallin,” she responded, her voice playful. “You offend my people _yet again_ by so gravely underestimating their aptitude. But it is no matter,” she added, “I will correct you. In time, we’ll see which of us proves the fairer.”

“No offense was meant, lethallan. I meant merely that such a challenge is one which I would rise to meet. Take care, though, that you do not make the error of underestimating _me_. Whatever experience you may have in such a partnership, I can assure you, I have more than one trick up my sleeve that you are likely to have not seen before.”

“We’ll be most formidable, the two of us,” she said, almost breathlessly. “But hold on to your sense of caution, lethallin,” both a merriment and a warning in her tone. “If you prove too stimulating you may find me looking at you with something other than kindness and respect.”

And there it was again, at once, the confluence of so many recurrences: his predatory grin; that intensity of feeling she’d fled from earlier; the sunken feeling that this danger was of a particular kind, alluring and dreadful at once, on the brink of something. He favored her with a crooked smile, an arched eyebrow, and she was once more very, very glad he had decided to stay. When he replied, his tone was dry, but with something _other_ lurking just beneath the surface.

“Perish the thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ir abeles, da'len - I'm sorry, little one.


	3. Val Royeaux, Across the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me about cities, Solas.” 
> 
> “Cities?” he mused aloud. “Which would you like to know about? Though I have not visited them myself, I could tell you about Minrathous, or Denerim—”
> 
> “No,” she said, her words soft. “Not places that I can visit. Places you’ve seen, in your journeys.” She hesitated, lips parted, before adding, “Tell me about the cities of our people.”

Everyone—Solas included—had been surprised at how quickly her mood had lifted when they left Haven and took to the road.

They shouldn’t have been. This, at last, was something she understood: a road underfoot, a journey underway, her nights spent under the glittering sky instead of beneath the roof of a cabin. This was a movement, a migration, a rhythm she fell into with ease and relief. She had not realized how eager she had been to leave Haven until she was past its gates, but then she could feel the weight of it lift off of her: gone were the eyes and expectations of Haven’s soldiers, clerics, pilgrims. She was on the road, and she was free. 

And in the lowlands of southern Ferelden, everything was _new_. She couldn’t help but delight in it, despite herself. They were right in the middle of spring, and the whole world seemed fit to burst with it, as if in defiance of the Breach and all the chaos it had created. Their purpose was serious, the situation dire, but traveling east, the Breach was at their backs; it was out of sight as she discovered each new species of tree or type of ore. They were so far south of the woods and fields through which Clan Lavellan roamed that at night, even the constellations were different, their view of the stars shifted enough that she had to re-learn how to orient herself by them.

Solas taught her how. Sitting away from the light of the camp fire, he would point to each star, trace the paths between them that gave the constellations their shape. All the way to the Hinterlands and back, she kept close to him. Each time she caught sight of an unfamiliar herb or flower, he would give her their name, instructing her on their medicinal and practical use. At every turn she was staggered a little more at the breadth of his knowledge. His willingness to share with her, to converse with her like an equal, eased the burden of what they were facing. Even if it was only slight, it was enough. This movement, this migration; it didn’t change anything that had happened to her, the dungeon or the mark or the impossible count of the dead. Nor did it allow her forget it. But it made it a little easier to live with, to begin to make her peace with. She was on this path, now, wherever it led.

It had been nearly a month since they had left Haven for the Hinterlands, but now, they were deep in the heartlands of Orlais, and it was early August. Soon, summer would be upon them, though for her part, Thanduwen could not say whether that would make the traveling more or less difficult. She had no idea what summer would feel like, on this part of the continent. Still, she could feel it like a promise in the rapid warmth of morning, and the relief when the sun set at night, and the world cooled. 

It was like that on the night before they reached Val Royeaux. It had been a hard day’s worth of riding, the whole day under the heat of the sun.  Cassandra had determined that they were a long day’s ride from the lakeshore, where they would take a ferry across the Waking Sea to the port of the city. With the city so near, she was eager not to waste another day. So, at her insistence, they had rode from sunrise to sunset, taking breaks only to accommodate the horses..

Even so, the steeds were spent from the day’s effort. The horses were unaccustomed to such journeys; they were farm horses, not bred for long distances and weeks of travel. Thanduwen didn’t know the first thing about horses—no more than the practical maintenance and care that Cassandra had taught her during the time they had spent traveling—but she was thankful that tomorrow, the horses would be allowed to rest. After how hard they had been driven today, she did not like the idea of pushing them further.

The others were already making camp. She could hear their voices some distance away, building a fire, pitching tents. But she lingered with her mare, murmuring soft words of praise as she brushed her coat. She was sorely in need of it. The pace at which they’d forced the horses had left her coat thick with sweat and dirt, kicked up in dust clouds with each stride. The horse was nothing like the halla her clan had kept, but even in her exhaustion, the creature seemed to possess a personality and a grace. It was difficult not to become fond of her. It felt like the mare had carrier her halfway across Thedas by now, though by all estimations she knew it to be far less than that. 

Not that you would know it, looking at the two of them. Thanduwen matched her horse: uneasy on her feet, her hips and her legs aching from the soreness of spending so long in the saddle. It had been much worse when they had first set out for the Hinterlands. By now, she could get through most days without any discomfort, but the last stretch to the lakeshore had done her in, the soreness returning with a vengeance. But her mind was far from that—from the soreness within her, the horse in front of her, the motions of her hand as she brushed out her coat merely a gesture, a repetition. 

None of it was enough to distract her from the sight of Val Royeaux in the distance.

The shape of its towers and walls was plainly visible, even in the pitch dark of evening. The light of the city was so bright she could barely make out the stars beyond it. All of Val Royeaux’s architecture was outlined by the golden light of the city itself, and the glow from the moon, reflecting off the water surrounding it and casting a pale, silver glow on the buildings by the seashore. There before her were buildings that she had only heard of, towers she could match names to simply by their reputation, even though she had never seen them before. Even from this distance, she could make out the tower of what she could only presume was the White Spire, gleaming, even in the night. Without knowing she was doing it, her face transformed into a scowl. Back in Haven, the few who had visited the city before spoke of it as a place of beauty: within its walls stood the might of the Imperial Palace, the Grand Cathedral, the University of Orlais. But to her, these were places of cruelty, places she had never hoped to visit herself. 

It was inconceivably large. If she had not see it herself, she might not have believe that such a place existed. A part of her was surprised she could not hear the Chanting from the Grand Cathedral even here, across the sea. She was at a loss to understand it, how so many people could live so close to one another without living in a constant state of conflict, of violence. Perhaps, in their own way, in their _grand game,_ they did. But as she marveled at it, the pace of her heart quickened, her pulse pounding in her ears (or was that the pulsing of the anchor again?) as her throat suddenly went dry. 

She dreaded every step that took her closer to that place. 

The reality of what she was about to do was unavoidable, now. It was entirely possible that they were walking into a trap, and one that she was being walked into against her own will. She had not wanted to come here. But whatever danger lay within the city walls, it was too late to escape it, too late to turn back now.

The horse whickered softly at her, and she blinked for a moment in confusion, before realizing she’d been so lost in her thoughts, her mind across the water, that she’d stopped brushing. The horses craned its head around to look at her, nudging her shoulder with her soft nose. 

“Oh, alright,” Thanduwen conceded. She dug around in the pockets of her traveling cloak. Then, finding her prize, she extended her open palm, a piece of dried fruit sitting in the middle. Eagerly, the horse took it from her. She gave the mare a fond pat on its shoulder, then left it to graze with the other horses for the night.

She should have joined the others for dinner, but at the sight of the Orlesian capital across the water, she was feeling decidedly less than hungry. Instead, she meandered over to an attractive looking tree (an _ash tree_ , Solas had told her) and dropped herself in front of it, with her back to the camp, her face to the city, and her knees pulled up to her chest.

Behind her, faintly, she could hear Cassandra and Varric arguing again. By now she would have sworn that Varric provoked her on purpose, to engage her in what (at least for him) seemed little more than an exercise in witticisms. It had become so commonplace it no longer distracted her. But soon, rousing her out of her reveries, a voice she could not ignore:

“May I join you?”

He had snuck up behind her, soundlessly approaching to stand just to the side and behind her. She could barely make him out in the darkness, silhouetted as he was against the light of the campfire, a vague golden glow around his edges, but there was no mistaking his voice.

“Please,” she said, giving him a faint and unconvincing smile that was no doubt lost in the dark anyway.

Solas crouched down and took a seat, his back against the trunk. She was immediately aware of his presence beside her, the proximity of their bodies, even if they did not touch. Though they had been traveling with Cassandra and Varric for the past month, for the most part, she had been spending her time with him. In between their spontaneous botany lessons ( _“Silver Birch?” she had repeated after he’d said it, somewhere near the cross roads in the Hinterlands, laughing in delight as her fingers felt the papery smooth texture of its white bark_ ) they had spoken of so many things; their shared interests seemed to be inexhaustible. They spoke at length on matters of the arcane. Often, Solas told her stories of his journeys into the Fade. At first it had alarmed her, the idea of him sleeping in such dangerous places and going so deep into the Beyond, but that alarm had quickly transformed into a fascination and a fierce curiosity. 

But, of more interest to her than all else, was when he spoke of what he knew—or claimed to know—of Elvhenan. 

For her part, she couldn’t rightly say whether she believed everything he said; but in short time, the question of whether or not she believed him no long mattered. At first he his talk had been hesitant, distant, scholarly; it was as if, despite all her insistence to the contrary, he did not really trust her not to interrupt him or correct him, accuse him of foolishness or blasphemy the way others had. But after some time had passed, when his tales and descriptions were met only with her curiosity, something changed. When he spoke about Elvhenan he did so with a poetry and a longing in his voice that she identified with all too keenly. For someone who so vehemently insisted he was nothing like the Dalish, he certainly spoke about Elvhenan in the same way they did. He had the same tone of voice— the same wistfulness.

His version of history, however accurate, was so alluring, seductive; she could not get enough of it. It was enough, to help her endure what had already happened, what was to come. And it was always far better to be talking with him instead of sitting, silently, in one another’s company. When he wasn’t talking, she found herself far too frequently thinking of his hands on hers in the dim of his Haven cabin.

Which was most likely unwise, and probably unproductive. It was likely nothing would ever come of it. There was an understanding between them, and a kinship (they remained, after all, _accomplices_ ) but the heat of the moment that had passed between them in his cabin had not resurfaced. If she didn’t know any better, she might have though she’d made the whole thing up. Despite the time they shared together their remained a distance with which he always seemed to carry himself. His guarded nature made even Cassandra seem like an open book, especially combined with his overbearing seriousness. Even though he always made himself available to her, any attempt to get him to open himself up to her only made him feel farther away.

It was… complicated. But then again, given her circumstances and her own particular history with these sort of things, she really shouldn’t’ve allowed such dalliances to weigh on her so heavily. Or, really, at all.

She heard him stirring beside her, accompanied by the sound of the cracking of bread. She turned her head, and he had half a loaf of their waybread in his hand, extending it to her. She looked at it, uncertain.

“You will need both energy and focus tomorrow,” he said, by way of explanation, and his tone was both gentle and firm. 

She looked at it for a moment. The truth was, she still wasn’t very hungry, her trepidation about the city across the water enough to turn her stomach. But the gesture touched her: he must have noticed she had not eaten since they’d camped for the night. She took the half-loaf from him, breaking off a small piece in her hands and bringing it to her mouth. She did not want to appear ungrateful. 

“What was it that you were thinking about?” he asked her. “You seemed deep in thought, out here by yourself.”

She hesitated a moment, then leaned a little closer to him, close enough to point out an object in the cityscape across the water. “Do you know which building that one is, there?” It was so imposing that to call it a _building_ was almost an insult; it was practically a palace, a complex of bell towers and spires and buttresses that dominated the city, all enclosed by a wall of imposing colonnades.

He paused for a moment, first following the line of her arm, then passing an inquisitive glance at her before responding. “I suspect that is the Grand Cathedral.”

“I thought so too,” she said, her voice quiet, almost resigned. She was transfixed by the sight of it, her eyes fixed to it. “Do you know what Cassandra asked me, before we left Haven? She asked me why I could not make room among my Gods for her own, for their Maker.”  

She said it in a casual tone, as if it were merely another offhanded comment, although it was anything but. It was a confession she had not made to anyone. Frankly, as much as it had shocked her, that shock was not so bad as the feeling of degradation and isolation that had sunk in afterwards. It was an impossible subject to bring up with Varric, or Josephine, or anyone else who she suspected was Andrastian. What if, when she told them, they agreed with Casandra? What if they too thought that Cassandra’s request was perfectly reasonable? It was a betrayal of trust she was not eager to experience again. Solas was the only one she could tell, but before now, they had so much more to talk about, topics of a more pleasant nature. But now, with the Grand Cathedral—that seat of so much power, and all the abuses that usual followed such authority—in plain sight, just across the sea, she could no longer hold it back. And once she had started, she couldn’t stop, the whole of her disgust and discomfort spilling out of her in a torrent. 

“It was as if she were accusing me of something, as if excluding her God from my own was a personal offense. Which was ironic, and quite frankly astounding, _her_ taking offense, given her flagrant disregard for that my people and people like me have been imprisoned, murdered, and chased from their homeland in the name of her god. But that matters little, doesn’t it, since everyone is so firmly convinced that Andraste saved me? As if that is an irrefutable truth, as if I should fall to my knees and weep that their Maker took it upon himself to spare a knife-eared apostate such as myself, in all his infinite wisdom.” Her voice was thick with sarcasm, the quiet rage she’d carried with her mounting into something relentless. “And now they expect me to… to go to the Grand Cathedral, to fall to my knees in front of these Clerics—many of whom would surely rather see me dead before giving me any semblance of respect—and beg for their _permission_ to do what they themselves are incapable of doing. I am expected to go among them, to treat them with deference, as if they are all such reasonable, kind people. While I myself can hardly get through a day without being disrespected in some way for being who I am, instead of whatever idea they have formed of what I should be, what they want me to be. Their _Herald,_ ” she spat, practically sneered. “Which, despite my insistence to the contrary, the Inquisition will not officially denounce the title, because it is too politically convenient to maintain the illusion that I am, or could be, divinely appointed to this task. It makes me _ill_. And as if that were not bad enough I am… I am _wasting_ my time, we will waste weeks coming back and forth from that city when there are people in the Hinterlands who actually needed our help. If I were really any sort of Herald at all, I think that is where I would be. And all of this just to reach out to the mages, as though they would not even grant us an audience until we have some kind of sanction. Which is unfathomable to me, really, considering they are in _open rebellion_ of the Chantry to begin with, having dissolved the circles, so you would think they would not take the opinion of the Chantry too seriously. And yet here I am.”

And then she was quiet; and as soon as she’d run out of things to say she realized she was fuming. Her chest was heaving to catch up with the force and speed of her words, her face twisted into something ugly. Solas was silent for a long time, the sound of her catching her breath the only one left to compete with the sounds of Varric and Cassandra’s latest argument, still in full force behind them. She thought perhaps Solas was still digesting everything she’d said—she had said quite a lot—but then she caught him looking at her. 

It occurred to her, with sudden awareness, that he was waiting to speak until he was sure she was finished. That she had said her piece.

She wasn’t sure what to do with the wave of thankfulness that overcame her, then. So she tore her eyes away from him and returned to the bread in her lap, tearing halfheartedly at it. After a long time, he responded, slowly, as if he were being very careful with his words.

“It frustrates you that they do not realize the weight of what they ask of you. That pain is understandable. But it does not mean that ceding to the authority of the Chantry is any less necessary.” 

Her face was twisted into one of anguish at that, something twisting inside of her, the voices of her Clan mates raised in chorus, _never again shall we submit;_ and yet here she was. About to do just that. No matter how small a concession it may have seemed to everyone else, to her it felt like the deepest of betrayals she could have committed against her people. What would they think of her, when all of this was done?

“Da’len,” he said, and it grounded her, dragging her back to him, pulling her out of the well of distress and despair she was spiraling into. “The Inquisition was founded by a decree from the Divine. Her authority, and the Chantry by extension, is the only thing that lends the organization legitimacy. Were it not for that, you would face even worse accusations than you already do: usurpers, dictators, opportunists.”

“I’d much rather be a usurper,” she said, her tone dry.

It was difficult to say for sure, in the dark, but she would have sworn that had him fighting back a smile. 

“If that is truly what you want, there is very little to stop you.”

Her expression was stony. She hardly believed him, but then again, Solas was not really one to make jokes. 

“You can’t be serious.”

“If you close the Breach, what will they be able to do to stop you, then?” he asked, a smile playing about his lips as he turned his eyes back to the city. “You will be a power in your own right: the Herald of Andraste, whether you yourself accept the title or not. The Chantry defies the Inquisition because the Chantry is weak, mired in its own power struggles and collapsing under the weight of policies that are as absurd as they are abhorrent and self-serving. I do not know where this path leads, what this fledgling Inquisition will come to stand for in time, but I do know that if we do what we have set out to do, it is very likely that you will have a hand in shaping what comes after.”

It didn’t matter, really, whether she believed him or not; she did not _want_ to believe him. She had hardly wanted anything to do with this Inquisition, and even if she had agreed to join of her own free will, it had been made abundantly clear to her that leaving was not really much of a choice. She did not like to contemplate the possibility that she might remain a part of it, even after the Breach was closed.

“Why do you say that?”

In response, he leaned closer to her. She was exquisitely aware of the space shrinking between them as he extended his own arm, pointing out across the water, this time not at the Great Cathedral, but at the white tower, dominating the city, shining like silver in the moonlight. She had noticed it before, when she had been sitting on her own. 

“Do you see that building? The tower, gleaming, as if illuminated by magic?”

“The White Spire,” she answered. Her tone made quite clear how she felt about that, thick with revulsion.

He lowered his arm, and turned to look at her. “You spoke about working with the mages. If seek their help, there will be consequences. They will be safer, for one, under the protection of the Inquisition. You can keep them sheltered from the templars who have made it their duty to annihilate them. That is no small thing.” 

When he said it, she was reminded of the crossroads, the Hinterlands, torn apart by the fighting. The war had left its indelible mark on the landscape. The corpses of dead mages and templars strewn about the path, burned alive or run through with blades, had been such a common occurrence that even in their few short days there, Thanduwen had ceased to be surprised by it. Trees that must have stood for hundreds of years were scorched with the marks of magic gone astray, if not cracked, split, and toppled. From the forward camp, they were close enough to the source of the fighting at the crossroads that, when they were quiet, they could hear the cacophony of it: war cries and clashing swords and the screams of the injured and the dying. Smoke rose in thick columns from homes, looted and burning, throughout the day and the night.

It had resulted in another explosive argument with Cassandra: Thanduwen had not wanted to leave, not while it was still like that. But here they were, while the Hinterlands burned.

Solas continued. “If they help close the Breach, it will only give them more clout when it is needed. If you allow them some degree of autonomy to self-govern within the Inquisition, it will prove they are capable of doing so. When this is over, something will have to replace the Circles of Magi. The more leverage they have when that time comes, the better. You can give that to them.”

He turned to her; she could feel his eyes on her, even as she turned her gaze back to the bread in her lap. His voice had softened. “It is not easy, what they are asking of you: to stand before the Chantry, to be humble instead of indignant. But is it perhaps an acceptable cost, when so much might be gained by it? Earn their confidence, and then use it to thwart them later. Force their hand. This is the Orlesian Chantry—and that is their Game, is it not? Deception, and subterfuge. I have faith you might prove just as good at it as the rest of them, if you truly believe that so much is at stake.”

They were quiet for a long time, after that. It was another one of his strengths: the quiet never made Solas uncomfortable. She imagined that, perhaps, he had spent so much time alone that it did not make him anxious the way it did with others. He seemed content to let her mull over what he had said. It was probably true that he had meant to comfort her, with his words, but she wasn’t sure he’d succeeded. Perhaps he was right, and for all the unjustifiable nonsense and the pain, she might somehow salvage some good out of it all. But she was not keen on the way he’d talked about it, as though she was in possession of so much power if she would only see it, as if she were capable of changing the world as simply as tugging a string. She did not want that power. She didn’t feel in the least like she would use it wisely.

Behind them, the sounds of their camp had quieted. Varric and Cassandra had either ceased their arguing or retired to their tents for the evening. It was quiet enough that they could hear the faint crackling of the fire behind them, the rush of the wind through the leaves of the ash tree when the breeze kicked up off the sea. Thanduwen kept her eyes to the ground, occasionally tearing at the bread in her lap, chewing thoughtfully.

“Do you find any beauty in it?” Solas asked her thoughtfully, breaking the silence, gazing across the water. “Everyone spoke of it so… breathlessly.”

She scoffed. “I’ll reserve my aesthetic judgements until we make it in and out of there. If I am _very_ lucky, I won’t have spend enough time inside of it to form any sort of opinion at all.” She was quiet for a moment, then added, a bit hesitantly, “Actually, I’ve never been inside a city before.”

He did not seem surprised by the admission, but still he turned to her, inquiring in a tone more conversational than curious. “Never?”

“I’ve been through some smaller human settlements, mostly farmlands and small trading posts. My clan tended to stay on the borders of the city-states; it was easier to avoid danger, there. Occasionally, our warriors were permitted to enter Wycome, if there was particularly rare commodity they needed to barter for, but I was never allowed inside. As a matter of caution, mages were never permitted to go. No one wanted us to be… provoked. I suppose there was always the possibility that a templar might just seize us and carry us off on sight.”

He turned to her, surveyed her for a moment, trying to make out her features in the dark. “Are you nervous?” His voice, softened.

“Yes,” she confessed, easily, surprised at how quickly it had come—how easily she always found it to confide in him. She could hardly imagine speaking to anyone else in the Inquisition so frankly. “I cannot begin to imagine how to navigate such a place. If it comes to blows—should I need to defend myself, or find a way out—“

“I do not think it will come to that,” Solas said. “If we are careful, and you are, and we conduct ourselves with tact and some degree of diplomacy, I see no reason why weapons would need to be drawn at all.” Raising an eyebrow, a trace of a smile, the glint of teeth in the moonlight, so she knew he was joking (provoking, just like Varric): “The Dalish did teach you about diplomacy, correct?”

She rolled her eyes at him, but couldn’t keep a hint of a smile off of her face in spite of it. “As you yourself have said, Solas, my clan was one of the few to have enough of an interest in human affairs and send a spy—your words—to the Conclave. So yes, I know about diplomacy, as it was our attempts at keeping an eye on what passes for diplomacy among the humans that got me into this whole mess to begin with.”

“Then we should be fine,” he responded, the grin still playing about his lips. Then, more seriously, he added, “In any case, regardless of your personal feelings for her, Cassandra won’t let anything happen to you.” 

“Cassandra? What about you? Are you not my accomplice?” she asked, faux-aghast, joking to mask the hurt his words had caused her. “If Cassandra fails, you’ll just let them drag me off or cut me down, will you?”

“Of course not,” he responded, softly. “But I am as much an apostate as you, and I do not bear a divine mark which makes my survival imperative. I would hesitate to draw a weapon myself unless I had no other choice. But if it was a question, if you had any doubts, yes, of course, I would defend you. You are, after all, not merely my _accomplice_ ,” he said the word with a warmth that pulled her mouth into a smile, “but also our best and only hope.”

That had her face scrunched, (had he but called her _his_ only or best—) “Are you going to call me the Maker’s envoy as well?”

“Not unless that would help lighten your mood, though by now you know it would not be sincere.”

She smiled, pushing a piece of hair out of her face before staring back across the lake, curling tighter around herself. His presence was consoling, and his words were kind, but still they did little to reassure her. As knowledgeable as he was, Solas was not prescient. None of them really knew what awaited them inside Val Royeaux.

She shifted her weight, leaning backwards until she could feel him beside her, the backs of their arms kissed against one another. Even his simple gesture, this faint contact, a tremendous comfort. She could feel his body tense, but he did not pull away.

“Tell me about cities, Solas.” 

“Cities?” he mused aloud. “Which would you like to know about? Though I have not visited them myself, I could tell you about Minrathous, or Denerim—”

“No,” she said, her words soft. “Not places that I can visit. Places you’ve seen, in your journeys.” She hesitated, lips parted, before adding, “Tell me about the cities of our people.”

_(Though she could not see it, she was never aware of it, [not until now, because now is, in fact, later, or a second time, and strange, because she is both within and outside her self, she now observes the way] he looked at her with such fondness, then: the first time she has said ‘our people,’ and he does not fight her. And she knows, now, [later] that he can only do so because she [then] is not looking, incapable of seeing how much that question moves him, pulls him through himself and into this moment, with her. Affection. Moving through time or the Fade to see him, here, under this ash tree: and whereas before he had stiffened at her touch, he now moves closer. Even then an unspoken warmth, even if neither of them were yet aware of it.)_

“Close your eyes.”

She obeys.

“I have seen a city not unlike the nomadic homes your people keep in the paths amongst the trees: here, in this city, there are no castles or fortresses of unforgiving stone. Instead, the city is green and alive. The architecture is stepped, each temple and home a series of variously pitched levels, and on the roof and sides of each building—on every space available—something grows. Here has been collected every variety of flower and fruit and shrub and tree that can be found in all of Elvhenan, and many which can be found no longer: flowers whose names we have forgotten. There are flowers which shimmer, their color changing with each warm breeze. Some of them have grown so well, so strong and fat, that by the time their season ends their stems can barely support their heads, which turn downwards; they favor the passer-bys below with their faces as if they are saying farewell.”

“The gardens have each been carefully planned, so that each building only casts a shadow on an appointed area for an allotted amount of time, and the flora are planted between them so that each plant receives precisely the correct amount of sunlight to reach the pinnacle of its growth. The pervasive nature of magic in that time helps make it so that for every season, the city appears lush and bursting with life—here, it is always summer. Vertical gardens scale the walls: vines, healing herbs, and spices. Walking across the city is like walking across the continent, with each new block home to a different kind of fascinating growth, some new teeming life. And the air is always fragrant—if you were observant, if you knew which way the wind was blowing, you could navigate the city by the scents alone. It is called Elarladahlen, “our home of the forest,” and it was a paradise among our people in its time.”

“But put that place of beauty out of your mind, da’len—because our travels take us elsewhere, to a city which has been planned so exquisitely, it makes Elarladahlen look haphazard by comparison. Here, every brick and cobble has been laid precisely and with distinct purpose, for the city is not merely a city, but an observatory. The buildings, both slender and stout in turn, sometimes curved, sometimes tapering or expanding at sharp angles, have been designed to not only mark specific coordinates on the horizon, but to track the movements of the Heavens, the arc of each star as it crosses the night sky. Its inhabitants must be vigilant, for the city moves with the seasons: the quarters of the city shift and the paths rearrange so that the great, magnificent and twinned temples of the City (which in themselves never move) are capable, each year, season after season, of a spectacular phenomenon. The temples take their names from the solstices of the winter and the summer, for at each event, these buildings cup the light of the rising sun and amplify it. The illumination on these sacred days is sent streaming down the main avenue, which bursts with it, gleams; the light shimmering on reflective pools, and on delicate, wind-tickled instruments with shards of colored glass. It glitters and shines, radiant in this colorful dance of light. The entire avenue must shift by inches every day to accommodate this alignment. The temples have dictated the rules of movement of everything else in the city, and the spires and statues of the buildings trace the movements, even in their gradual shifting, of every constellation; every movement is measured, tracked and certain. And so to live there is to live in perpetual wonder and harmony with the celestial bodies, the stars making their mark on every day, every life, every path walked.”

“And yet none of these marvels compares to the beauty of Arlathan! It diminishes every other city that ever was or will be by the mere sight of it, for the purpose of the architecture of this city is simply to evoke beauty. Such emotion it inspires that it rouses a bitter homesickness in all who must leave it, and they are doomed to long for it til the end of their days. Spires of iridescent crystal, towers of the most exquisitely veined marble, capped in ores that shine like jewels in the sun. And the city is entirely bound up in magic, decorations filling the streets and which could only have been possible when such magic was still in the world: fountains where the water does not splash down but floats calmly upwards, a fire which glows and heats but does not burn, an elegance and a majesty to every moment and every gesture. And though Arlathan takes its name from the word for “love,” it was as much a place of love was it was a place of learning. For in Arlathan was the greatest library of the Empire: the link between all other libraries, the home of the magic which connects all the knowledge created and shared across all elvendom. For our people, you must understand, knowledge was both esteemed and sacred, and the towers of the library soar above the city, touching all with the awe of them. There are more records than you can dream, more tomes than you could ever read in a mortal lifetime, and an entire host of librarians, benevolent and waiting to assist, maintaining the library’s architecture and its beauty. And it held everything that had come, and some things that had not come to pass; in volumes with gilded pages, bound in soft leathers of every color, an answer to every question.”

She did not interrupt him, she did not question him like she normally did; she let the fondness and longing in his words carry her far and away, and for a long time after he was finished speaking they sat in silence, contemplating these visions of long gone places.

 


	4. Rebels and Rogues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If you had any honor you would acknowledge that you won’t help them because you are afraid of them!” and she was shouting, now, she realized, but didn’t really care. “Poor Knight Captain, incapable of helping the mages when it was his job and just as incapable of doing it now, when they really need him! If you’d so quickly leave them to their deaths, why aren’t you out there with your brothers, staining the Hinterlands red with their blood?”

( _In the dream, she is running, running. Chasing—something. Through verdant glens, through valleys deep, over steep mountains and past open plains. Something swift and white just beyond the reach of her almost-there anchor-hand. And between the leaves and the vegetation she can see, she can just catch glimpses of: Revered Mother Havara, the words of hate which leave her lips, the fist which descends from nowhere and strikes her down onto the platform in the Summer Bazaar; Lord Seeker Lucius, with the air of a tyrant, arrogant and power-mad, and Cassandra’s shock and confusion, her insistence that this had been a “reasonable man,” as if reasonable men would lead such a troupe of thugs as that which trailed behind him; and all the while the tapestries fluttering above them in the gentle breeze coming off the sea, smelling salty and fresh, like her home. But messengers, and arrows, and running through the markets looking for clues; an ambush; an elf; “you glow?” “I do.” I do, I do, I wish I didn’t. And out of the shadows Grand Enchanter Fiona who had been waiting, watching, and it took everything Thanduwen had not to accept her into the fold on the spot, to wrap her up in an embrace, as if she were kin, “you are welcome here,” so opposite was her entrance to that of the boisterous Lord Seeker; and why not work with rebels, were they not all rebels, the heretic Dalish Herald, the apostate, the Nevarran blasphemer who’d held them all aloft, and now joined by Red Jenny in all her multitudes. A promise that she would perish before she let Cassandra break: she would be returning, soon, to Redcliffe, the ravaged Hinterlands. But not before—the Bastien Estate, not far from the city, but never has she felt so fish-out-of-water, so forest-footed, so exceptional in all the wrong ways as accusations are hurled and then refuted and resolved, a practical lesson in not-a-toe-out-of-line, and joining the five of them, now {four becoming five} another {five becoming six} the former Imperial Enchanter herself! a merry band of companions to disagree with each other, again and again, every step of the way back to Haven—trying to convince Thanduwen of something, all things, any thing, as if she is the Decider, as if she really has more experience, knowledge, or authority than any of them.)_

As it happened, her suspicions about the rebel mages were correct; they did not seem to care one whit about what the Chantry thought of the Inquisition.

Perhaps their meeting with the Chantry in the market square had not gone poorly, exactly, but it had certainly not gone _well._ And yet, even after that, the Grand Enchanter had been their, willing (if not eager) to discuss the terms of an alliance. Fiona was so open with them; it gave Thanduwen the nagging suspicion that the trip to Val Royeaux had just been a political overture to working with the Templars. Perhaps to the Seeker and the former Knight Captain it was but a stepping stone to seizing command of the Chantry’s military arm. 

She filed the thought away for later. In any case, if that had been their goal, it had backfired tremendously; the Templars had shown themselves to be nothing if not unworthy of alliance. Nevertheless, now, their path to the mages was clear; and unlike the Templars, the mages already wanted to work with them. 

She could hardly have been more pleased. She had been skeptical of making the trip, but by a stroke of good fortune (and Fiona’s ambition) some good had come of it, after all. And in addition to the invitation from the mages, there was the matter of her personal company’s inflated numbers. They had been a party of four when they entered Val Royeaux; when they left, little more than a week later, they were six.

Through back alleys and ambushes they’d found Sera—or Red Jenny, or both, she still wasn’t quite sure. By invitation, and on a vast and well-manicured estate, they’d found Vivienne. She had welcomed them both without hesitation. For one, she felt the Inquisition could use all the help it could get. But more than that, their trip to Val Royeaux had given her a nagging feeling that it was not he last she would see of Orlais; the Inquisition after all was founded on the authority of a Chantry that was Orlesian in all but name. She wanted options available to her when that time came: agitators and sympathizers, denouncers of the game and its greatest players. 

Of course, then, it had probably been foolish of her, not to foresee the complications that would arise from traveling with the two of them: a woman who was, for all intents and purposes, a member of the Orlesian nobility, and a woman who had made it her purpose to harangue and harass said nobility, simply because she could.

The return journey to Haven took no longer than the trip to Val Royeaux, but time seemed to pass impossibly slowly.

The tenuous harmony (or at the very least, tolerance) that had developed between the four of them—Cassandra, Varric, Solas and herself—was disrupted almost immediately by the two newcomers, popped like a bubble. Not a day went by without some bickering, words of condescension being flung carelessly in all directions. Trying to have a conversation was like navigating a minefield; she was often accused of being either too elfy, or too Dalish, too short-sighted or too naive. More often than not, she kept her thoughts to herself. Varric and Cassandra hardly got a word in edgewise at each other. She could not have been more relieved when they finally reached the path that led upwards towards Haven.

(What their arguing really meant, the real cost of their petty conflict: she realized, now, that what Solas had said on the evening before they set foot in Val Royeaux was correct. What would unfold in the next few months [ _unrealized, yet: that months would stretch to years_ ] was not merely about the Breach, but what would come after. Even united as they were now in one common purpose, afterwards, the conflict would begin again: what to become of the templars, the nobility, the Chantry, the mages. Questions without easy answers, and, beginning to dawn on her, the tremendous responsibility with which she must weigh each of her decisions, her actions; if she were not careful, she could very well close the Breach, but leave the continent in a greater state of turmoil than before the Conclave. 

And a part of her, whispered and secret but dawning, wondered just how much she could get away with before that happened.)

“Wait - _that’s_ it?!”

Sera’s voice, incredulous, ringing out in the cold air. They had just crossed the bridge over the gorge, and Haven was in sight. 

“That is Haven, yes,” Cassandra confirmed. “Restored in 9:35 at the request of Divine Justinia, to provide shelter to pilgrims visiting the Temple.”

“Whatsit, a Chantry and a four huts? It’s so– so– itsy bitsy! That’s the Inquisition? That’s what got that Chantry sisters’ knickers in such a twist?”

“It’s more like six or seven huts,” Varric corrected, in his most teacherly tone, “and a tavern, too.”

“Oh, well, thank the Maker for that!” Sera continued, throwing her hands up in the air. “You _are_ lucky the Templars left the Chantry, Lady Herald. They’d’ve made short work of your twig-fence and quashed your Inquisition faster than you can say ‘Andraste’s unmentionables,’ tavern or no tavern. Though I can see why the sight of this place drives you all to drink.”

“Some of the greatest institutions of our time have come from humbler beginnings, my dear,” Vivienne said, stiffly. “Appearances are deceiving, and many battles have been won solely by victor’s ability to manipulate such perceptions. Is that not why you dress the way that you do, darling? So that no one could possibly be threatened by the sight of you?”

To that, Sera blew a loud and wet raspberry in response. “Not all of us spend our days fapping about, petticoat this, reputation that. I’ve got enough to do without having to worry about whether or not my tits are going to pop out of my corset.”

They were close enough now that they could hear the clanging of Harritt’s hammer in the forge, and the clash of metal as Cullen drilled the soldiers. He caught sight of them as they rounded the corner, rushed to Cassandra’s side, whispered something. They exchanged a few words, expressions serious, before she waved him away. Thanduwen could not hear what they were talking about, but she did catch Cassandra’s last words. She reassured him, “We will meet with Josephine and Leliana in the Chantry shortly.”

The six of them rode to the modest stable outside the walls, beside Harritt’s forge. A small tent had been erected beside it, with basic (if a bit slipshod) shelving. It served as their tack room. After tying up her horse (and rewarding it with a sizable sliver of dried fruit) Thanduwen headed there, only to find Solas, oiling his saddle.

He smiled at her; she, in turn, closed her eyes, sighed in relief, smiled back. 

“I thought that trip would never end.”

“All things end,” he replied, his work coming to a pause as he turned to face her, “but yes, that journey was not as comfortable as the one that preceded it.”

She laughed, shook her head, tossed her saddle over one of the beams that formed the shelves. “That’s an understatement. You and Sera were practically at each other’s throats—never mind Vivienne.”

Solas hummed in agreement. “I had forgotten that not all elves are as receptive as you are to conversations about our history. As disappointing as that may be, it has only deepened my appreciation for your interest.”

She turned to reply, but found him—a perfect picture—sleeves rolled up to reveal the unfamiliar but welcome sight of strong, freckled forearms, his back straight, his posture perfect, silhouetted by the golden sunlight at the entrance of the tent and looking at her with such focused attention, such intensity, that she could only laugh uneasily in response, diverting her gaze for a brief moment before turning back to him. “I appreciate your willingness to share with me.”

“It is my pleasure. It was very isolating, before. Being able to talk with you, having your confidence—it means a great deal to me.” He looked at her as if measuring her. A moment of silence hung between them for a moment, before he added, “If you aren’t rushing to the Chantry, I have something else to share, now that we have a moment to ourselves. Though we have not travelled far outside of Haven, it is clear that like a stone dropped through the still surface of a pond, what happened at the conclave is rippling through Thedas, altering everything, shifting the balance of power in ways that are difficult to anticipate.” He paused, expression determined. “While closing the Breach must be our primary goal, I believe it is just as imperative that we also recover the artifact that helped create it.”

“Artifact?” she asked. “How can you be certain such an artifact was involved?”

“We know that the Breach was created deliberately; your mark makes that much clear,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. “But the power needed to create the Breach is beyond any mage, or group of mages. Such destruction would have required the use of an amplifier, or foci, to channel the energy required—I have encountered mention of such artifacts in my research. And any artifact capable of such power is dangerous—you, I am sure, need less convincing than anyone of that.”

She looked away from him, disquieted. “You don’t think whatever created the Breach was destroyed in the blast?”

“I doubt its fate was tied to that of the Temple. You survived, did you not?”

“Was the site searched?”

“Thoroughly, but Leliana’s people recovered nothing.”

The realization of what he was saying was sinking like a stone in the pit of her stomach. “But if it was not there—if it was not there and not destroyed—someone removed it. Someone else who survived the blast and fled the area before the Inquisition arrived.”

He looked at her, uneasy for a time, before nodding. “I have expressed these concerns to Cassandra, but she will not consider them in earnest. She remains single-minded in her ambitions to close the Breach, and such pragmatism is admirable—but perhaps, under the circumstances, unwise. I would not have troubled you with this unless I felt I had reason for concern. We cannot know what threats we will face in the months ahead, but we should be prepared for anything—including resistance from those who created the Breach in the first place.”

She exhaled deeply, hung her bridle off a post on the wall. For a moment, she closed her eyes, wrapping her head around the ramifications of what Solas was implying. That someone had murdered the Divine was irrefutable. That someone had deliberately created the Breach (for what inconceivable purpose, she could not say) was a thought that had been growing in her mind, but one that she did not want to acknowledge, hoping against hope that the Breach itself had been some kind of horrible accident. And she did not welcome the knowledge that Cassandra seemed to be withholding information from her. She was grateful that Solas had told her, but the Seeker should have told her a long time ago.  

She moved towards the exit of the tent. When she came up beside Solas, she placed her hand, gently, on his forearm.

It was a small touch, a gesture she would have performed countless times to reassure or express gratitude to a member of her Clan. But once her hand made contact with his skin, she realized her error; she was not sure if it was the atmosphere of the tack tent that had palpably thickened, or her awareness of the moment, but something changed at the feel of his skin underneath hers. 

Still, he did not flinch; and she did not move away.

“Thank you for telling me this,” she said, her voice soft. “I do not intend to discuss it yet with Cassandra and the rest, but I will keep it in mind.”

“That is all I ask, da’len.” He looked down at her hand on his forearm; then, tentatively, he placed his hand over her own, squeezing it gently. “Now go. They are waiting for you.”

 

Thanduwen had been under the impression they were about to deliver _good_ news to the rest of the Inquisition’s leadership. But as soon as Cassandra cast open the doors and the two of them entered the Chantry, it was clear that she was wrong. The air was tense. Whatever word Leliana’s scouts had sent ahead regarding their trip to Val Royeaux, it had not pleased their Ambassador, nor their Commander.

They had heard of what had happened in the bazaar. But what began as a civil discussion between the five of them did not remain that way. The scout had reported accurately: on Grand Enchanter Fiona’s invitation, as well as the Lord Seeker’s outlandish behavior. Thanduwen did not have the advantage of training and years leading such organizations that the other four had, but still, she thought it fairly obvious what their next move should be.

Not everyone agreed with her.

Commander Cullen was still advocating to approach the Templars. It seemed thoughtless, at best; at worst, insidious. She was reminded again of the encounter with Fiona in Val Royeaux, how it had been clear she had come specifically to approach the Inquisition about an alliance, and how it had made her think that the whole song-and-dance before the Chantry had far more to do with the benefit of the Templars than the mages. And so what began as a civil (if tense) discussion soon devolved into a shouting match between herself and Cullen. It was not becoming of either of them. And as it dragged on, she could see it was making the other three uncomfortable.

“You can’t seriously be suggesting we pin our hopes on what few dissenters their may be in the ranks of the Templars,” she said, arms crossed over her chest. “We can’t even know for certain if they will be able to suppress the Breach enough for me to close it, and there’s no telling how many Templars would be needed for such an endeavor.”

“For what must be _the hundredth time,_ I am certain that they would be able to,” Cullen said. “And even if I were not, that still seems a far wiser idea than having an veritable army of mages prime you like a barrel of gatlock and hope for the best. How will you control such a swell of magic? Do you even know you can?” he responded, his hand outstretched to her, asking for assurances that everyone in the room knew she could not provide.

“Your certainty means less to me than that awful Eye on all our Heraldry, or the Sunburst above the door.” Now she was taking a step closer to him, pointing at him in accusation. “If we do not help the mages, who knows how many will be left to be executed by what remains of _your_ Order. How can that mean so little to you?”

Josephine seemed ready to interject, but she was cut off but audible smack of Cullen slamming his fist on the war table in front of him. “And what happens when Haven is overrun with abominations, and we do not have the adequate manpower to do anything about it? All the empathy in the world won’t protect us then,” he said, his mouth curled into something ugly. “It is already difficult enough to having to keep a constant eye on that hedge-mage that you’ve come to trust so dearly.”

She blinked, stunned by his words. There was so much to protest in his response she didn’t know where to begin, but _hedge-mage_ kept echoing through her thoughts, ricocheting. 

She couldn’t help it; she lunged at him. 

Cassandra had to hold her back, seizing her forearm as Thanduwen struggled to get around the table and closer to Cullen. Leliana was watching the entire display with an air of detached fascination; Cullen only looked at her coolly, his own arms folded. 

“Perhaps it would be best to table this discussion until such a time when we have more information available to us,” Josephine interjected, her voice audibly nervous in a way it almost never was, passing a pointed glance at Leliana.

But Thanduwen was not finished.

“If you had any honor you would acknowledge that you won’t help them because you are afraid of them!” and she was shouting, now, she realized, but didn’t really care. “Poor Knight Captain, incapable of helping the mages when it was his _fucking job_ and just as incapable of doing it now, when they really need him! If you’d so quickly leave them to their deaths, why aren’t you out there with your brothers, staining the Hinterlands red with their blood?”

That got a reaction from him. His posture shifted as if to challenge her, taking a few steps towards her where Cassandra was still struggling to hold her back. Cassandra was undoubtedly the stronger between the two of them, but Thanduwen was spirited. As if to challenge her, his hand crept to the hilt of the sword at his side.

The gesture did not escape anyone’s notice.

“Cullen!” Leliana shouted. It cut through the room like a knife. There was an authority in her voice that stilled the room.

“This argument is premature,” Josephine interjected again, more confidently this time, “and unworthy of both of you. We cannot hope to accomplish anything if we cannot even work together. We will need to, in the weeks to come. We still do not have enough influence to approach either party safely.”

“Horse shit,” Thanduwen huffed, softly but audibly. But Leliana gave her a very pointed look and that shut her up, averting her gaze to the floor.

Leliana stepped towards Josephine, subtly signaling her agreement. “We need more agents in the field, and more information. Corporal Vale has maintained our presence on the Crossroads, but my scouts are still reporting many incidents of violence throughout the Hinterlands. Such conflict will have to be settled before we have a clear path to Horsemaster Dennet in the farmlands, _or_ Redcliffe to the North.”

“The horses would benefit from some rest, and at least a two of them should see the farrier before we set out again,” Cassandra replied, her grip loosening on Thanduwen’s arm, but still firm enough to discourage her from wrenching herself free. “We can be prepared to leave in a few days. As I understand it, the Herald was eager to return to the Hinterlands to stabilize the situation there, were you not?” And then Cassandra was looking at her, as if to chastise her; but unlike Leliana, Cassandra could not intimidate her. Thanduwen stared right back.

“Then it's settled,” Leliana said, quickly, before Cullen or Thanduwen could get another word in. “We will revisit this discussion when we are better informed. In the meanwhile,” she added, and her voice took a distinctly sharp turn, “let’s try not to do the Chantry’s work for them and put out our Inquisition before its even started.”

 

Cullen had excused himself immediately, storming out of the room, a tense aggression in his stride. This did not go unnoticed, but none of the four women that remained dared to comment on it—at least not with Thanduwen present. As soon as Cassandra had released her, she excused herself, leaving the three of them to disparage her, no doubt; she found she did not care. 

Outside the war room, the Chantry was quiet. Mother Giselle stood in her usual place, outside of Josephine’s office, talking quietly to an acolyte. She seemed to deliberately avert her eyes when Thanduwen appeared. Thanduwen could not help the feel of smug satisfaction that she felt at her visible discomfort. What mental gymnastics, she wondered, would Giselle have to go through to reconcile her idea of Thanduwen as a prophet with the outburst she had no doubt over heard with perfect clarity just outside the war room door? So lost in that feeling, she did not notice Madam de Fer appear with silent grace and dignity from one of the Chantry alcoves on her way to the exit.

“Are you quite alright, my dear?” she asked. “I could not help overhearing. Nothing specific, of course; but whatever the subject of contention was, it certainly seems to have roused the passions of the Commander.”

Thanduwen looked her over, then turned her gaze to the door. As stressful as the journey back to Haven had been, it had given her an opportunity to get to know the Inquisition’s newest members. Throughout, Vivienne had repeatedly demonstrated her powers of observation and her sensitivity to subtlety. Standing so close to the war room, she highly doubted that Vivienne had not been able to overhear far more than she was letting on.

Even the length of the journey, however, had not been quite enough for Thanduwen to make up her mind about how much she trusted the former Imperial Court Enchanter. Vivienne’s concern seemed genuine, but she could not be entirely certain. Madame de Fer’s achievements were impressive; she had not accomplished them, Thanduwen was sure, through candor alone.

But at this point, given what she had probably heard, there seemed no point in trying to deceive her. “There is some disagreement among the five of us regarding whom we should approach for help closing the Breach. The Commander is… cautious, to say the least, about working with the mages.”

“And quite rightly so,” Vivienne commented, her chin tilted upwards in a gesture of authority, power. “Reluctant as you may be to work with the Templars, it would avoid certain significant and unavoidable risks that we would expose ourselves to by aligning with the rebels, not to mention the tangled political implications of such a gesture. Those risks need to be weighed and calculated accordingly against the benefits—the Commander knows that better than most.”

Her swift dismissal surprised Thanduwen. The idea of abandoning the mages was difficult for her to contend with, and she’d never even set foot inside a Circle; some of the people they were talking about could have been Vivienne’s students. (Her friends, maybe, if the Imperial Enchanter were capable of such a thing.) She couldn’t help the look of skepticism that briefly flashed across her features. “I think his reluctance has a little more to do with Chantry doctrine than pragmatism,” she responded, dryly. “You would refuse the mages help so easily? Even when they are being hunted by the Templars like animals?”

When Vivienne replied, there was a slight note of condescension in her voice. It was hardly necessary. Her body language—most likely practiced—had done a perfect job of communicating how Thanduwen’s insinuation had offended her. “Darling, as I have reminded you on more than one occasion already, I am the leader of the remaining _loyal_ mages. Unlike my short-sighted compatriots, I recognize the necessity of the Templars as an institution. Have you ever encountered an abomination? Mages are capable of great things, to be sure, but also of horrors beyond your imagination—doubly so, with the Breach to contend with. The rebels have made their choice to leave the protection of the Chantry, and now they must suffer the consequences. Do not let your idyllic upbringing among the Dalish cloud your decision making.”

She blinked, a few times and in quick succession. _Idyllic_ had her blood pressure rising again. Whatever she felt about her Clan, however badly she missed that life, she was sure it had not been idyllic; whenever it had been peaceful, the threat of that calm being disrupted always hung over their heads. But frankly, arguing with Cullen had been exhausting enough. She simply sighed, tilting her head before responding, “Are you suggesting we reject their help?”

“Not at all. Properly controlled, the aid the mages could provide would be a great boon to the Inquisition,” she said. “However if we do choose to work with them, they must be willing to make certain concessions to insure that Haven remains safe for the refugees and soldiers that were here before them—concessions to which Fiona will be reluctant to acquiesce. Tell me, what do you think will come to pass once the Breach has been closed?”

Thanduwen hesitated. “I do not know.” She was still thinking of her conversation with Solas, and Vivienne’s question sent that unspoken, unnamable dread sinking through her once more. She had thought, for some time, that once the Breach was closed, the Inquisition would no longer be needed; now, she was not so sure. “I want to believe that the chaos will end. But a part of me fears that closing the Breach is just the beginning.”

“I imagine it is,” Vivienne agreed, her head tilting as if in sympathy, “but what a grand beginning it would be, if the Inquisition succeeds. And whatever comes next, mages, templars, and innocent people across Thedas will look to the Inquisition—to you—for answers. After all, they see you as an instrument of Divine authority, an envoy of the Maker’s will, regardless of how true that may be. That belief gives you great power.”

“No one should have that power,” Thanduwen replied, her answer swift and decisive. “To speak as a messenger of the Gods. To hold sway over the fate of so many. I don’t want it.”

“Perhaps no one should,” she answered. She was so perfectly still, every movement intentional; she managed, somehow, inexplicably, to seem both as remote as the most regal monarch and familiar as a most trusted confidant at once. “But if no one leads the way, many will be left behind in darkness. Whether or not you work with the mages, and how you choose to do so, will no doubt have ramifications far beyond the closing of the Breach.” 

How much truth was there in what she was saying? Thanduwen could not be sure. Vivienne had already admitted that part of the reason she had joined the Inquisition was in pursuit of power; that she believed any amount of power was too much for one person to yield was a bit difficult to believe. For her own part, she felt woefully unprepared to be yielding such power, to be making such decisions. But that did not shake the conviction she felt about going to Redclilffe. She nodded, distracted in her own thoughts, and then gave a word of thanks, preparing to excuse herself before Vivienne stopped her.

“Let me give you a piece of advice, if I may: whatever disagreement exists between you and the Commander, it is best not to let it fester. It would be wise to try and convince him that your proposed course of action is superior to his. After all, if you cannot even convince an ally of your preferred course of action, how can you ever hope to sway your enemies?”

“He’s a Templar,” Thanduwen replied, looking at Vivienne with skepticism. “We don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on this matter.” Never mind the fact that to convince him of anything might require an apology, and she found the idea of having to apologize to him incredibly distasteful, to say the least.

“As he would be the first to tell you,” Vivienne said, with a smile, “he is a Templar no longer, regardless of where his sympathies may lie.” She turned around, and the gesture was slow, deliberate, graceful, dramatic; she called over her shoulder, “As you so diplomatically put it before, you want the chaos to end. That certainly isn’t the worst place to start.

 

Outside the Chantry, it was snowing. The flakes drifted lazily to the ground, powdery and light. When the breeze blew through the settlement, it kicked it up in swirling eddies, twisting idly before falling to coat the earth once more. Columns of smoke arose from the cabins in the settlement, and as ever it smelled earthy, and crisp. Momentarily, hesitating, she closed her eyes and felt the snow fall and melt on her face. The temptation to flee, out into the untamed wilds just outside of Haven, was strong; it took some self-control to resist. 

She fixed a look of determination on her face, and set out, through the courtyard and down the steps, proceeding past the mabari statues and the merchants and through the gates. 

She was greeted by the cacophony of metal-on-metal: hammers on anvils, swords on shields. Horses, whinnying gently nearby, and the ghostly sound of the wind moving through the mountains. She turned her gaze to the sparring men… Sera was right. They did not have the strength to defend this position, if it ever came to that. They could not afford to waste the time they had bickering over whom they would approach when their ranks needed reinforcements so desperately.

Cullen stood amidst the clamor, his hands clasped behind his back, surveying the exercises of his men. Whatever he saw in them seem to have calmed him, reassured him. One of his lieutenants was standing beside him, reading off of some missive in his hands, but as Thanduwen approached, his voice faltered, and he backed a few feet away. Alerted by the interruption, Cullen turned. He looked surprised—though not completely displeased—to see her.

“Commander, a word?”

Cullen turned to the man at his side. “Keep drilling the men.” Then, gesturing for her to follow him, he walked through the din and towards the lake, stopping at the vista beyond the sparing ring. But he did not admire the view; instead, he trained his gaze on her. “What can I do for you, Herald?”

But now that she was here, she could hardly bear to look at him, never mind make amends. The landscape before them was so empty, and vast, the still sheet of frozen water on the lake’s surface stretching out in front of them; she lost herself in it, staring across the lake with the sounds of the soldiers sparing just behind them. Again, as it often did, the weight of her responsibilities felt crushing; she had come to the Conclave, hoping against hope to see the Templars disbanded altogether, if not placed on a much tighter leash. And here she was, trying to work together with one of them. How to begin to explain to him what it felt like? How to tell him that everything he said about the mages sounded more like proselytizing than reason? They were beside one another but she felt an immeasurably vast space between them, one she was not sure she could bridge with patience and kindness—and her reserves of both were running low.

She sighed, brought her hands to the center of her face, smoothing the skin outwards from her forehead along the lines of her vallaslin. She knew what she had to do. But she could not find the words to say it, the apology sitting in her stomach like acid, refusing to come. Then, in the silence, Cullen spoke.

“Would it help if I went first?”

“What?” she asked, clearly surprised. Her whole body reacted to it, turning to look at him and tilting his head, eyes narrowed.

He smiled, though the gesture made him seem far more embarrassed than kind. He brought a hand around the back of his neck. “I’ve… had to admit when I’ve been at fault plenty of times in my life, more times than I would care to. I have a lot of practice,” he said, with a laugh. 

 _No kidding,_ she thought, biting back the retinue of snide comments in reaction to his admission. But they must have been evident on her face, even unsaid; Cullen grimaced in response.

“My behavior in the war room was uncalled for,” he said, straightening his posture; he was attempting, Thanduwen thought, a picture of chivalry, but she did not find it to be at all convincing. “I regret that my temper got the better of me; it was unworthy of me. You deserve more respect than I gave you.”

She only stared at him; he was looking at her, expectantly, but grew increasingly uncomfortable under the scrutiny of her glare. She didn’t care one whit what he thought of her, how he treated her. Of far greater concern was his personal baggage that seemed to make him incapable of being objective about what direction the Inquisition had to take next. _That_ was what she had taken issue with, and his inability to realize that did not reflect well on him. She could not quite believe him; then again, perhaps she had been the fool to expect better.

But he was clearly expecting something more from her. She turned her eyes away from him and brought her hand to her mouth, her fingertips running over her lips pensively before she folded her arms. “I don’t want to apologize,” she said, finally. “For the sake of closing the Breach, I want us to be able to work together. But I won’t apologize for what I said. I meant most of it. Perhaps I should have insulted you less, been kinder, calmer. But this is a topic on which I find it difficult to be calm and honestly, I’m not sure I’m capable of it nor do I feel I should be.”

She turned back to look at him; his brow was furrowed, and he was frowning.

“Lady Herald, I… it is not an easy subject for me, either. You do not want to leave the mages to their fate. Can you not understand, then, why I would not want to leave the Templars to theirs?”

She shook her head, combing a hand through her hair, tugging at it a bit before turning back to him. “No one’s hunting Templars, Commander. And if they ever came to their senses—as you seem to think they still have some sense remaining—the Chantry would welcome them back in a heartbeat. You were a Templar; you know what the Chantry will do to the mages if they submit. And if you’re willing to leave them to that fate, to be made Tranquil or murdered, the least you could do is admit it.”

Now, he seemed irritated. “And what makes you think I want to see that happen?”

“That _is_ what will happen, if we do not help them,” Thanduwen replied. “You called Solas a _hedge-mage._ You’d have probably thrown him in a Circle already, if there was anywhere left to hold him. And he’s the best chance we have of closing the Breach.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“No?” she asked, incredulous. A protest was on her lips—rushing to his defense, her _accomplice,_ or, and, something else, the feeling of the skin of his forearm under her hand—but she was silenced by the way he was looking at her. He was smiling, and this time, it was not embarrassed, or meant to cloak some shame. It was surprisingly kind, and patient.

“You are.”

She could not help herself; she rolled her eyes at him. “You are!” he insisted, without impatience, almost amused at her refusal to acknowledge it. He inclined his head towards her, a sort of half-bow. “And if for no other reason than that alone, I owe you more respect than I have shown you.” 

She wasn’t sure what to say to that. That his respect meant little to her; or at least, meant very little as long as it was based on some perception of her as a herald, a prophet. That such responsibility made her feel crippled beneath the burden of it; that she wanted to mend things with him, work with him, so that she might feel a little less alone in the whole endeavor, with others to support her, to understand what she needed. But she did not get the chance.

“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?”

She turned, giving him a questioning look. “Solas,” he added, by way of explanation. She grimaced, and looked out again across the lake: there were the trees she’d climbed the day she’d met him in his hut. Remembering the feeling of his hands on hers. “That’s none of your business,” she said, a note of chastisement in her voice, “but yes, I suppose I am. Given that he’s probably the only person in the Inquisition who isn’t trying to tell me I’m some kind of prophet for a religion I am not even a part of, however, that was probably inevitable.”

“You still don’t believe you are?” he asked, a note of amazement in his voice. “Not even a little?”

She couldn’t help but smile a little at that, the grim line of her mouth curling upwards. He seemed so genuinely shocked at her refusal, as if it were incomprehensible that she did not feel quite so divine as they all thought she was. “After that display in the Chantry, I’m surprised you still think I _am._ ”

“Of course I do.” And it was so simple, how he said it. Nothing weighted or serious about it, just an earnest belief. 

She almost envied him for that.

“You want me to… save the world, close the Breach,” she said, her words coming slow, feeling them out, trying to find the best way to describe it to him. “But that’s your world, that you want me to save, and I won’t do it. To me, that world does not deserve saving.” And it was strange, to hear herself saying out loud, as if she was realizing it for the first time. Solas’ words, Vivienne’s words, everyone heaping their expectations upon her and this was it, then, what she really felt about it all. If she was here, if she was trapped here, if this was her path, she’d make damn sure she was more than just a Chantry errand girl. “If I’m going to do this, I want to do it in a way that the Chantry can never be the same again. And I think it’s better that you learn this about me now.”

She turned to look back at him; she nearly laughed in his face. He was clearly alarmed, and doing a very poor job of hiding it.

“What will that mean, for the Chantry?”

“It means that the Inquisition will be pursuing an alliance with the mages,” she said, and looked at him hard. “If the Templars and the Seekers wish to pitch a fit, like _children,_ let them. I am not going to lend their puerile complaints or their loathsome dogma any legitimacy by working with them. If they ever come to their senses, they can crawl back to the Chantry on their bellies and beg forgiveness. And that’s how it’s going to be, Commander, or else I may be tempted to flee in the night in the company of my so-called hedge-mage and do this on my terms.”

He was getting into a huff again. It was plain to see on his face, the way he was trying to keep the tone of the conversation civil and rebut her at the same time. This, of course, was an entirely different reaction than the one he’d had in the Chantry. But then, she realized: they were still within earshot, and full view, of the Inquisition’s troops, who seemed to believe just as much as the pilgrims that she really was Andraste’s Herald. It would hurt Cullen’s reputation and authority far more than it would hurt her if the soldiers caught the two of them arguing. 

And he knew it.

“Maker’s breath,” he cursed, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes for a moment. Then he looked at her, his expression wary. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Herald.”

And she didn’t—not really. She still felt all the insecurity she had before, not wholly qualified to be making the decisions that she was. But whom among them was prepared to do so? A purpose was budding inside of her. She did not know how long it would take to close the Breach, how long she would be within the ranks of the Inquisition, but she did have one thing, now: a direction, a true north. If she had to be among Andrastians, zealots and priestesses alike—if she was going to be held aloft like some kind of redeemer—she may as well begin to act like it. Perhaps little would come of it. In the end, maybe the gains for the mages would be small; the gains for the Dalish and the elves, even less. But if there was some difference to be made, she would do it. Vivienne had come to the Inquisition in pursuit of power, but Thanduwen already had it, right at her fingertips.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanduwen and Cullen have a very special relationship; I always look forward to writing the two of them together.


	5. Old Artifacts, New Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan returns to the Hinterlands and discovers someone unexpected while looking for Elven artifacts with Solas. WARNING: Graphic depictions of violence, some mentions of animal butchering, serious spoilers for "The Masked Empire."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Graphic depictions of violence, some mentions of animal butchering, serious spoilers for "The Masked Empire."

Time trudged ever forward. Suddenly, they found themselves in the full flush of fall, late Kingsway. That fall in the Hinterlands was unusually warm, and humid; no one could say for sure whether it was another aspect of the influence of the Breach, or something all to itself. The heat made her feel sluggish, each of her movements a little less precise, as though she were struggling through a fog. This did nothing to improve her ability to fight and defend herself, a task at which she already found herself to be woefully inadequate compared to her companions.

She envied Varric, Cassandra, Solas; they seemed to move with such confidence and grace, their movements practiced, worn in like leather. So comfortable they seemed in their stances and forms, and every move they made to assault or deflect seemed to be executed with ease. She was improving, that much was true; but she did not yet possess that knowledge, that sense of being-within-the-body, a physical intuition for such gestures. How to not merely to react, but to move with intention, each action deliberate: protecting, assessing, disabling. 

On one of their first days after reaching the Hinterlands, they were closing a rift not far from the Crossroads. Apart and separate from the others, she dispatched the last of the wisps with a blast of lightning. She felt the gentle _woosh_ of it, the rush of magic leaving her body and shaping into a column of raw energy which shattered the wisp where it hung, suspended; it dissipated in a wave of tiny lights, like sparks, ascending and floating back into the rift.  But in casting the spell, she had used more mana than she intended, and it staggered her, leaving her lightheaded. 

She took a moment to catch her breath, leaning her weight on her staff to steady herself as she looked around. Far across the meadow, Cassandra was fighting off two shades at once, a flurry of blows, her mace flashing in the sun. Varric and Solas were battling the remaining terror, and seemed on the brink of bringing it down. 

None of the remaining demons were paying any attention to her. 

Quickly, she raised her palm upwards. It was a trick she had only figured out recently, but a useful one, especially when the day had been long and hot and they were all at the end of their rope, as they were now. It would not close the rift, but by disrupting it momentarily she might stun the demons for a short while. The way Solas spoke about it, it was as if, so close to the rift, they were not in the Waking world or the Fade, but straddling both, one foot in each place, even if the four of them were not sensitive enough to feel it themselves. But the demons knew. And any disruption to that connection, that sense of _in between_ , confused and disoriented them enough to incapacitate them for a time. Long enough, perhaps, in this case, to give the four of them a chance to destroy the remaining shades and the terror before they stirred from their temporary paralysis. 

Under the influence of the anchor, the rift reacted immediately, its mouth opening to her, yielding to her. A rope of shuddering light manifested between her hand and the tear, raw energy racing along its length like blood rushing through veins. Her whole arm shook with the force of it but the rift shuddered too, close to something, puncture or disruption. There was a charge building between them, and it was so powerful that she could no longer hear the fighting around her, only the roar of the rift, and beyond it, something, staring….

And then, she saw it. 

Time seemed to stretch—or perhaps she merely felt more present inside of its passing—catching sight of this thing for only the span of a few beats (of her own heart? Or the pulse of the anchor?) but an eternity seems to stretch between each one. She squinted past the light of the anchor, past the rift, trying to focus on the figure on the other side of the meadow. 

But what she saw seemed impossible. For one, the Breach had been said to drive animals mad. The fennecs, the rams, and the birds and the bears of the Hinterlands kept their distance from the rifts, knowing somehow (perhaps instinctually) that they were unsafe, or unnatural. And yet... there was the wolf, precocious and familiar, staring at her from across the meadow. It was nothing like the native wolves they had encountered so far in the Hinterlands. It was smaller, to start, and its coat was white. It was a small miracle that the thing hadn’t been killed already for its fur, so poorly camouflaged it was for these parts and so beautiful. And it was looking, she was certain, directly at her; without knowing how she knew, she knew that it had come _for_ her. It carried itself just like it had when she’d spotted it in Haven, aloof and observant. Her lips parted, her expression curious—

The roar of the rift was suddenly something greater, immediate, directional. And something else, distant, tugging at her consciousness—

“Thanduwen!”

But the terror leapt up from the ground behind her before she could understand the warning, the repetitions of her name (each time shouted with heightened alarm) not enough to save her from the force of the terror demon phasing out of the Fade. It severed her connection with the rift and sent her flying, before she crashed into the hard ground. 

The violent disconnection between herself and the rift startled her almost as badly as the force of the fall. It knocked the air out of her, and panic clouded her mind. She had been caught so defenseless; she cursed herself for being so distracted. Something was torn in her shoulder—she could feel the sweet soreness of a pulled muscle, or a snapped ligament. She struggled to breath as she righted her staff, planting it firmly onto the ground and trying to use it to hoist herself upwards, steeling herself.

But the terror demon had ambled over to her, its ungainly limbs swaying with each stride. One of its arms was winding back, preparing for a mighty swing. 

Thanduwen heard the muffled, womb-like hum of one of Solas’ barriers as it bloomed above her, thickening and charging the air around her. A crossbow bolt struck the demon directly in the shoulder, and though the force of it sent the terror demon twitching as it stumbled backwards, its focus remained on her. Undeterred, its gnarled and misshapen face distorting into a howl (that spine-chilling shriek) before it raised its arm once more. 

The blow came down on her hard, tearing along her cheek and her neck, the terror’s claws gouging deep cracks like river beds running with red from her eye socket to her shoulder, the strength of Solas’ barrier not enough to save her, this time. And this time, when she falls, the ground beneath her is not hard nor dry but moist, sticky, warmed by the blood spilling out of her body and she barely has the strength to keep her eyes open through the pain and her weakness never mind fight and “ _this is it_ ,” she thinks, as her vision narrows down to darkness, the image of the white wolf in her mind even as the sound of the battle begins to fall away, “ _this is how it ends, and all because I could not tear myself from the sight of that one curious creature_.”

But it isn’t.

Before anything else, before any of her other senses return to her, she can hear something. Like a song, like water carried far beneath the ground, pristine rivers like ribbons through the darkness, through caverns like cathedrals of limestone columns where time has weaved its magic; something undisturbed, untouched, and ancient. Lost, remembered, and recovered; and it moved within and through her. And she could feel something subtle, like the sound of a twig snapping in the night, and she knew she was not alone.

A new magic. Out from the darkness she could hear herself gasp as air moved into her lungs and through them, and something, not pulling, but lifting her, gently, by her core, levitating (and she can feel her limp legs drag against, then lift off from, the ground) and magic moving through her, but not her own. Blossoming, unfolding, petal by petal, as the blood rises in pristine, unsoiled droplets from the ground like tiny garnets decorating the scene of her suspended body for a moment before returning to their fount, the lacerations on her face and shoulder knitting themselves back together (woven, the feeling exactly like the sensation of a rift closing behind the gentlest touch of the anchor) until she is let go, released gently onto her feet, staff in hand, more spry and healthy than she had been before they’d even seen the rift. As she came to her senses, she could have sworn she saw a pair of wisps press back through the Veil, departing from her without the faintest trace of resistance or malice.

She glanced across the meadow and saw Solas, standing, breathing heavily from the exertion, his arms still raised in the gesture of the revival spell he had cast. He had summoned the spirits that had saved her, healed her and set her back on her feet. He nodded at her from across the way, face serious, but a small smile—relief?—tugging at the corner of his mouth.

A cry drew their attention to Cassandra, who with one final blow had crushed the head of the terror beneath her mace. “Now!”

Thanduwen raised her hand to finish what she had started. It still stole the breath from her lungs. Every time the mark was activated, she felt that same sense of swelling, like a wave rolling into something monstrous, a towering tide. Always accompanied by that feeling of something other ( _something beyond_ ) just past where the Veil was mending itself, calling, reaching for her. And then—so violent and abrupt—the hole suddenly plugged, and all of those sensations snatched away. But afterwards, Creators, she felt potent; her spine a little straighter, her magic a little stronger, her confidence a little surer, if only for awhile. She was fierce, and triumphant.

But only until the moment she caught sight of Solas. He was staring at her from across the clearing, and his expression was one both of disapproval and concern; the mixture of the two left her feeling shamed. Because she knew, even before he spoke to her and without having any real reason or justification for it, that she was going to lie to him about what had happened.

 _A fine accomplice you’re turning out to be,_ she chided herself. Any partnership built on lies, she knew, was destined to fail. Still, what was she supposed to say to him? That she had been so perturbed by the sudden appearance of wildlife it had rendered her incapable of paying attention?

(Though it was more than that, she knew. They’d had wolves in the Free Marches. She’d felled her share of them defending the clan’s halla. This creature—without know how she knew, she was sure it was the same one she’d seen in Haven—was something else. If she could not admit it to herself, it did not change the fact that this, the sense of _other_ , was why she lied to him; something she did not have an explanation for, kept secret for no other reason than the intuition that she was meant to: the glance shared between herself and that creature not something she was willing to share with anyone else, not yet.)

Swiftly and elegantly, Solas spun his staff and slipped it back into its harness between his shoulders. He was still favoring her with that searching glance. Now that the danger had passed, he seemed intent on chiding her for her recklessness. If she was honest with herself, she could not blame him.

“You were distracted,” he said. There was a question in there, somewhere, though it sounded mostly like criticism.

She tried to deflect it with smile, but that did nothing to soften his countenance; her smile soured into a wince. “You’re right.”

“You need to be more careful, da’len,” he said, sternly. “You are becoming over-confident. You need to remain more mindful of your surroundings.”

She opened her mouth as if to protest that she was, indeed, careful, but closed it soon after. Getting smacked around by a terror demon because she was too interested in the sight of something unusual in the woods was not exactly the epitome of care. She bit her lip.

“Between the trees, I thought I saw someone watching us. A templar, maybe. But it must have been a trick of the light—whatever it was, it was gone almost as soon as I noticed it.”

She might have held her breath if she did not think he’d notice, waiting to see how her lie would land. But his scrutiny was brief, and he folded his arms, relaxing his posture. “You cannot afford such distractions—you must focus on your own safety. The Inquisition has no hope of closing the Veil if you are dead before we get the chance.” Then, after a moment of consideration, he added, “If you feel as though we are being watched or followed, I will endeavor to be more observant.”

“It was probably nothing,” she said. Then, hastily, she added, “What you did, the revival spell… it was amazing. That was spirit magic, wasn't it? The Dalish do not use it, but I have heard of it before. The spirits… I _felt_ them, lifting me up.”

As she had predicted, the show of curiosity was enough to distract him from his disapproval. In response, the corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. “Unlike what your Keeper may have taught you, there is no inherent danger in spirit magic. It is only dangerous to those who do not understand it, or seek to pervert its purpose.”

“Will you teach me how?” 

He looked surprised by that. She was not sure why. It was inarguably a useful skill, and it wasn’t as if, as time went on, there would be _less_ of a possibility of one of them being seriously injured while fighting rogue Templars or bears or Creators only knew what. Perhaps he thought that she would not be so open to learning a form a magic that the Dalish refused to practice. But the truth was, that had been _useful,_ and it hadn’t harmed anyone.

He was slow responding, looking at her curiously, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what she wanted from it. Then, “In our idle time, yes, I believe I can teach you. If you wish to learn.”

“Of course I want to learn,” she responded, without a pause. “I want to be able to do the same for you, and Varric, and everyone.” 

His scrutiny seemed to soften, then, for a moment; he looked so kind and wise and… immeasurably old. How old even _was_ Solas? She hadn’t a clue, hadn’t given it a thought, really, despite the more amorous inclinations he inspired in her. But then she was reminded of being pulled out of the blackness, of coming to: that song, that ancient feeling, fresh water, untouched, underground, and she felt herself blushing a little, the tell-tale heat creeping up the sides of her neck.

“I felt you, too,” she admitted, bringing her hand to her chest, recalling the sensation. “Not just the spirits. In the beginning, when you were summoning them to me, I felt this…” but she was at a loss to describe it, how to tell him of the visions the faintest touch of his magic had inspired in her without sounding girlish and smitten. Her fingers tapped at her sternum as she chased the words, fruitlessly; she ended up looking up at him instead, a smile on her face. “That’s what you _feel_ like. What your magic feels like.”

He looked at her so fondly then, it took her off guard. The warmth of it awed her. 

“Yes, lethallin. That is what I feel like.” 

Then, as if he were catching himself or correcting himself, he cleared his throat, tearing his eyes away from her. He straightened his posture, casting his gaze around the landscape. “According to my research, ancient elves set up wards in this area. If we can find the artifacts they used, it may strengthen the veil against tears such as these. We should be on the lookout for any ruins of the appropriate age.”

Just like that, the intimacy between them evaporated, as if it were never there in the first place. She could not do it quite as convincingly as he could; when she looked at him, she was still so full of admiration and awe that it must have showed. But her tone was even, businesslike. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll keep our eyes open.”

 

They had left Haven on the third of Kingsway, heading first for the Fallow Mire. The brief detour lasted only a few days. They freed the Inquisition soldiers from the clutches of the Avaar who had held them captive, and headed north. Just past mid-month they had arrived in the Hinterlands, and set about clearing the mess they’d left behind on their first visit. Closing the rift had been part of that; now, north of the crossroads, an Inquisition scout had given them word of a suspicious group of bandits. They were keeping both refugees and merchants off the East Road. Flushing them out seemed as good a way as any to spend an afternoon.

Carving a path through the barricades the “bandits” had set up on the East Road proved far easier than closing the rift. Thanduwen was thankful for it. She did not relish the killing, but this, at least, was straightforward. Nothing was going to suddenly jump out from behind her that hadn’t been there already. The bandits were no match for the four of them. They fell under arrows and lightening and the sharpness of Cassandra’s mace.

But then, something out of place; after defeating another rag tag group of them close to the road, instead of the silence that ordinarily fell over the conclusion of a skirmish, there were more sounds of fighting.

Then, in between the fighting, a voice shouting Elvish.

It was fragmented, mostly old Dalish curses in between bits of common, but Thanduwen heard it, unmistakable though faint under the sound of spells being cast and meeting their mark. By the time the others had heard it, too, Thanduwen was already gone. She rushed ahead of the group, cresting the hill in front of them, hardly daring to hope—and then, her heart catching in her throat as she saw a young woman in Dalish leathers, fending off a rage demon.

She could tell the girl was not from Clan Lavellan by the color of her gear, and the stance in which she fought made it clear she had not been trained by Keeper Deshanna, but she was Dalish, nevertheless. She was still tired from their skirmish with the bandits, but she had some strength in her, yet. Before any of the others had even crested the hill or caught sight of the young woman, Thanduwen had swung her staff out of its holster. With a shout, she raised it to the sky; a column of light, white-hot, struck the demon where it stood. It groaned, withered, and dispersed; the spot where Thanduwen’s magic had struck it smoldered in its wake.

The Dalish mage looked to her with surprise. She had not noticed them approach. Almost immediately, however—just as quickly as Thanduwen had recognized her—she saw, even from a distance, the mark of the vallaslin on Thanduwen’s face, and smiled.

“Andaran atish’an,” the mage said, greeting them as they approached. “I did not expect to see another Dalish blood here. My name is Mihris.”

“Aneth ara, Mihris,” Thanduwen replied. “I am Thanduwen, first of Clan Lavellan.” She extended her hand to shake Mihris’ in greeting. 

Over the weeks that had passed since leaving her Clan, the formal gesture had become second nature. But her breath caught in her throat and her eyes stung when, instead of shaking her hand, Mihris cupped her palm around Thanduwen’s elbow, clasping the full length of her forearm instead and inclining her head towards Thanduwen. As Thanduwen’s own fingers reached around Mihris’ elbow in the traditional Dalish greeting, she closed her eyes.

She had to fight back her tears, chastising herself. It was far too small a gesture to deserve such generous displays of sentimentality. She would not show such outward signs of vulnerability—at least, certainly not in front of Cassandra. But to be greeted this way, in the traditional way of her People, touched a deep-seated homesickness within her that was always threatening to bubble to the surface.

When she opened her eyes, Mihris was looking at the Seeker over her shoulder, her gaze suspicious. Thanduwen could hardly blame her. “Your company is strange, friend. Are you refugees of the war?”

Thanduwen shook her head. “No, we are not—though we are making every effort to help the refugees. These companions are my friends.” Whether or not ‘friends’ was the right term, exactly, she wasn’t sure, but it seemed the best way to reassure the young Dalish girl of her safety. She turned to them, gesturing to each as she introduced them. “This is Seeker Pentaghast, Varric Tethras, and Solas; Solas believes we may be close to an elven ruin that holds an artifact of great importance to us.”

“And she’s the Herald of Andraste,” Varric called from behind her. “Though it’s possible her sudden fit of nostalgia has led her to forget that tiny, insignificant detail.”

Thanduwen scowled at him; Mihris merely looked at her in surprise. “I had not believed the rumors to be true. The shems’ Herald, a Dalish blood after all….” For a moment, Mihris looked at Thanduwen, her gaze curious. Then, she smiled. “You are in luck, _Herald._ The Creators smile upon our meeting. I had heard of elven artifacts that measure the Veil—perhaps the very same that you seek—and travelled to Ferelden in search of them. In fact, I believe one is nearby.” She turned her head and pointed. Not far from where they stood, the uneven ground gave way to a cobbled entry, ruined arches still standing like broken teeth along its edge. And just in front of them, masonry peeked out from behind ancient vines. Behind a collapsed column, the upper arch of a doorway could just barely be seen, leading inside.

“If enough magical energy is used, I think the rubble can be removed, though I am a bit wearied from the fight.” She looked once more over Thanduwen’s shoulder, this time directing a pointed look at Solas. “You, Flat-ear, do you think you could manage it?”

Thanduwen froze. The expression on her face was still pleasant, but she had stiffened, visibly, in reaction to Mihris’ comments, not quite certain how to react to her use of the slur. But Solas was.

“Ma nuvenin, da’len,” he responded, before Thanduwen could get a word in edgewise. His perfectly pronounced Elvish was a far more effective chastisement than anything Thanduwen could have said. He raised the rubble with ease, and without turning back, ventured inside. Cassandra and Varric followed after him, but Thanduwen hung back.

“That was unnecessary,” she said, turning back to Mihris, her expression grave.

“What?”

“The name-calling,” she responded. “I would have you treat Solas with the same respect you would give to any of the People. He knows as much of the old ways as I do.”

Mihris’ smile slipped off her face, yielding to skepticism. Thanduwen turned to walk away from her, but Mihris stopped her with a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. It shocked her, a little. Such a gesture would have been ordinary among her Clan—they were never shy about touching—but she had been starved of physical contact for so long, that the gesture almost offended her. She gave Mihris a gaze meant to level her, but Mihris appeared unimpressed—by her title, her company, and whatever feeble attempt she was making to assert her authority.

“You walk among them, _friend_ , and they call you their Herald,” Mihris said, slowly and deliberately, “but do not make the mistake of forgetting that you are not one of them. All they need do is look at your face to be reminded of that; I would suggest you look in the mirror more often, to remind yourself.”

That was enough to call for outrage. The gall that this mage had, to assert that, simply because she had defended Solas, she had forgotten who she was. She had heard tales of Dalish clans that treated city elves with contempt, if not worse, but never had she seen such behavior first hand. For this wanderer to insinuate that she had forgotten blood writing she wore with honor upon her face, merely because of the company in which she travelled, was appalling. It was the one thing the Inquisition could not erase, a mark as clear as day that she was not a part of the Chantry, a visible reminder of her defiance, _never again shall we submit._  

“It would have been very easy to let the Rage demon take you,” she said, stiffly. “Had I forgotten who I was, and the allegiance I owe you by our shared blood, I might have.”

Mihris seemed to shrink at that, pulling her hand back, almost wincing. But when she looked back at Thanduwen, her gaze was obstinate, despite the remorse written across it. “You are right. Ir abelas. But I would have you… be cautious, of the outsiders.” Then, she added bitterly, “They will only protect you so long as they have a use for you.”

She laughed at that. Of course she was cautious. She was living in a perpetual state of caution, never really trusting those around her; it was exhausting. “That may be true, but they will need me, or have use of me, for quite a while yet, I think.” 

She looked at Mihris more closely, then. She could not have been any older than Thanduwen herself—more likely, she was a few summers younger—and yet here she was, out in the middle of the war-torn Hinterlands, all on her own. Based on what she had heard before she had left for the Conclave, the few Dalish clans that roamed this area had long since left. And Mihris had made a point of saying she had come _to_ Ferelden, as if she had crossed the borders of nations to get here. She forgave Mihris: for her insults, her condescension, even her treatment of Solas, though it was not really her place to forgive that. Whatever resentment she may have felt was swiftly replaced by concern.

“Why are you out here, on your own?” she asked. “What took you away from your Clan?”

“I have no Clan.” Mihris looked away from her. “Our Keeper was foolish enough to summon a demon. The demon took the lives of everyone in Clan Virnehn as vengeance for trapping him. I was searching for another Clan that would take me in when the Breach appeared. Now, I’m doing whatever I can to help with this madness.” But before Thanduwen could respond, Mihris turned her eyes to the doorway; Solas and the others had disappeared inside it. “Come,” she said, passing only a fleeting glance back at Thanduwen. 

But Thanduwen was rooted to the spot. She had been much younger, at the last Arlathven, but she had memorized the names of the remaining Dalish clans. It had not been hard; few Clans remained from the those that had been forced out of the Dales, and their numbers dwindled with every year. To hear that Clan Virnehn was no more filled her with grief. Before following Mihris, she said a quick, silent prayer to Falon’Din to guide their souls safely to the Beyond.

Yet the grief did not lessen the feeling of suspicion that grew in her heart as she followed Mihris through the archway. Her explanation had been a bit too tidy for her liking. Why would the demon have spared Mihris, and killed the rest? There was more to her story, she was sure; but for the moment, Mihris seemed unwilling to tell it. Thanduwen could not blame her—surely, no matter what had happened, the story was not an easy one to tell—but she was determined to get to the truth of the matter if she could.

Ahead of them, Solas was waving his hands in front of a brazier, a look of intense concentration on his face. He gave a triumphant smile when the brazier sprang to life with a pale green flame. 

“What manner of fire is that?” Cassandra asked.

“I have heard of this, but never seen it before,” Solas said, lighting a torch from the brazier and passing it to Thanduwen. “It is a form of sympathetic magic, a memory of flame that burns in this world where the Veil is thin. It is called Veilfire.”

“Hush,” Mihris said, silencing them. At that, Solas allowed himself to look offended; Thanduwen was sure he was ready to retort with another insult in perfect Elvish, but he never got the chance. “Do you hear that?”

They all strained their ears to listen. And then, faintly, Thanduwen heard it; up the stairs, from the chamber below them, came a sound like whispers.

“Where the Veil is thin,” Thanduwen said, repeating Solas’ words. 

Mihris’ expression was grim. “Be on your guard.”

They crept down the stairs, Thanduwen in the lead. Solas had told her to keep an eye out for elven ruins, but this place seemed to be nothing of the sort. Not that she would know it, necessarily; she’d come across very few roaming with her Clan. But the statues on the inside looked nothing like those that would have been created to revere the Elven pantheon. Skulls were stacked in corners in macabre pyramids, collecting dust, cobwebs knit over their eye sockets. The walls were lined with horrific figures that so plainly spoke of Death; they practically glorified it. At the center of the chamber stood a great altar, where three figures appeared to be clutching their hands to their gaunt faces in terror.

She was about to open her mouth, ask Solas what kind of an artifact they were even looking for, but Mihris’ shout interrupted her.

“Down!” she cried, barely giving Thanduwen enough warning to duck her head as a bolt of ice sharp as a blade soared over her head, and the growl that she heard behind her suggested that Mihris had met her mark. 

She knew that growl.

She dropped the Veilfire without a second thought, reaching behind her to free her staff from the holster on her back. Cassandra was two steps ahead of her. With a war cry, Cassandra ran past her; Thanduwen turned in time to see her swing her mace upwards with such strength that when the blow connected it sent the shade spinning backwards with the force of it. As always, she was impressed by Cassandra’s stamina; after the bandits and the rage demon, Thanduwen’s own reserves of both mana and energy were running low. She cast a protective barrier over the five of them and spun her staff in he hand experimentally, ready to use it more as a bludgeon than a foci of magic if any of the demons got close.

But they did not. There were only four demons in the chamber, and none of them seemed particularly strong—judging by the ease with which Cassandra and the others destroyed them, they were probably only lesser demons. The last wraith dissipated under Varric’s crossbow; the sound of the bolt clattering to the stone floor of the chamber echoed audibly as the wraith vanished before them.

There was no telling how long the peace would last. If the Veil was thin enough here to let four demons through, it was likely more would come; Thanduwen did not want to be around when that happened. She turned back towards where the torch had clattered to the floor. To her surprise, the Veilfire was still burning brightly. She knelt down to retrieve it, then turned back to her companions. 

From across the chamber beside the altar, still clutching Bianca in his hands, Varric shouted, “Hey, Chuckles? What exactly is it we’re looking for?”

“It would be a spherical object,” Solas called to him. “Most likely resting on a pedestal of some kind.”

“Like this?”

Thanduwen turned to look at him. He was standing beside a strange looking object; ‘spherical’ seemed like a generous descriptor for it. Predictably, perhaps, it had been placed before the ghastly altar she’d noticed before the demons had come through the Veil. She hastened over to it, the Veilfire casting its sickly light over the artifact in front of them. Scattered around it were the bones of unfortunate souls who had long since perished, but her eyes were fixed on the artifact. 

It was a curious thing, somewhat round, but protruding from it at all sorts of nonsensical angles were pockets and folds. It was made of a metal she had never seen before. Was it enclosing something inside of it? Solas had said it was like a ward, but _how_ to use it? She reached a hand forward, tentatively, wondering if it were hollow or solid all the way through, and what the metal of it felt like to the touch—

—and then flinched with an audible gasp as the thing came to life beneath her fingers. It burst with a green light. A halo bloomed around it then faded, like a pulse. It was… mesmerizing. The space around the artifact glowed and twisted, and a faint hum, or a crackle, was spilling out of it. It was eerily similar to the look and the sound of the anchor. She might have been suspicious of that; but then again, if the artifact was truly meant to strengthen the Veil, as Solas said, perhaps it made sense that the magic should appear similar to the kind that infused the mark upon her hand. She passed a look up at Varric, his face cast in the ghastly pallor of the artifact; he, too, looked unconvinced.

“The ward is helping to strengthen the Veil,” Solas said beside her, looking down at the artifact in front of them. “This area should be safer for travelers now.”

“Are you… sure, that it will make the Veil stronger?” Thanduwen asked, still uncertain. “You’ve said yourself that nothing in the Fade is a perfect reflection of reality. What if you… misunderstood, or after all these years, the artifact does not work the way it should?”

He looked at her strangely, as if her inquiry was unexpected. Perhaps it was. It was not frequently that she doubted his knowledge, but something about the artifact in front of her had her uncertain. After a moment, though, the corners of Solas' lips curled upwards. “But can’t you feel it?” he asked, gesturing at the chamber, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It is already stronger. Of course, if you would like to test my theory, we could always spend the night camping here, to see if any more demons find their way through.”

“I think I’ll take your word for it, Chuckles,” Varric responded.

Thanduwen wasn’t convinced; the truth was, it did not feel the slightest bit different to her. But Solas seemed confident, and if it was stronger, she couldn’t say for certain that she’d feel it. She wished she had the same sensitivity to the Veil that Solas did, but the truth was, whether the Veil was thick like wool or thin like silk, she could never tell the difference.

“Well, that should prove useful. And it seems the ancestors left something for me as well,” Mihris said. Thanduwen turned to look at her; she was rising from a kneeling position, and making no effort to conceal the fact that she was tucking something away into one of her pockets. She turned back to Thanduwen, a smile on her face. “I believe our alliance is concluded. I suppose this is farewell.”

Solas was stiff beside her; he must have caught a glimpse of whatever she had taken, and did not seem pleased about it. Thanduwen was equally displeased, if for different reasons. She’d only just met Mihris; she was not keen to let the younger elven woman just take off. It wasn’t as if Mihris had a particular destination. There was no call for haste on her part, and Thanduwen was still eager to get her to divulge, if she could, the full story of what had happened to Clan Virnehn. She cared far less about whatever trinket it was that she’d picked up from the floor.

Thanduwen took a step towards her. “There is no reason for you to go immediately. Why don’t you make camp with us for the night? You know full well how dangerous the Hinterlands are; you will be better off with us for the night.”

She could see Cassandra behind Mihris, and the way her she glowered at Thanduwen’s offer did not escape her. Cassandra looked ready to protest. Tolerating the help of an elven apostate in pursuit of an artifact was one thing; inviting one into their camp for the evening was something else entirely. Thanduwen silenced her with a sharp look. They’d trusted Sera and Vivienne enough to bring them back to Haven; surely they could survive one night with this Dalish woman.

But Mihris looked uncertain. “I have not camped with anyone else for quite some time. I have become accustomed to being on my own, danger or none.”

“Then do it for me,” Thanduwen responded. “Your company is a comfort to me, lethallin. A reminder of home. Sathan.” But Mihris looked around, passing pointed looks past Thanduwen at Solas, and Varric. She still looked unease with the idea.

“Ethas,” Thanduwen said, her voice empathetic, a reassuring smile curling at her lips. _You are safe._

For a silent moment, Mihris seemed torn, contemplating the idea. Then, after a tense moment in which Thanduwen thought she really might refuse, Mihris warmed to her smile, responding in kind. “Alright,” she said, nodding. “I suppose one night can’t hurt.”

 

With Mihris’ help, they finished clearing the East Road of “bandits”—they turned out to be lyrium smugglers—well before nightfall. A short journey north found them at their base camp. It was surrounded by imposing walls of granite, and Cassandra had approved of it as a “highly defensible position,” so they had decided to stay there for the night.

While the sun was still in the sky, Mihris set off to hunt. Thanduwen went with her, keeping her eye out for mushrooms and whatever other herbs might be found growing wild along the East Road. The hunt was only a modest success; the two women were more interested in comparing stories of their Clans and talking about the journeys that brought them to the Hinterlands than they were in hunting, and the volume of their voices made it difficult to surprise any of the prey that lingered along the path they’d cut through the smugglers’ territory. It was only by Mihris’ genius that they caught anything at all; by nightfall, they returned to camp with a brace of rabbits that Mihris had skillfully trapped with a rather creative spell.

Soon, they had set up a fire for cooking. The two women sat beside the hearth. Mihris skinned the rabbits, while Thanduwen chopped the herbs and sliced the mushrooms she’d found, in addition to several root vegetables she had bartered for on their most recent stop in the Crossroads. They giggled and laughed together as they worked. 

“Oh, I am lucky my father was a hunter!” Mihris laughed, struggling to neatly skin the animals. “I am poor excuse for a butcher, but I would know nothing of feeding myself if he hadn’t insisted I learn. As the Clan’s First, it’s not exactly like I was required to know how to do such things. While everyone else was out hunting I usually had my head stuck in a book.”

“It’s ironic, isn’t it,” Thanduwen laughed along, “how being Firsts, a position which we both competed so fiercely for, has left us somewhat woefully _unprepared_ to face the tasks before us?”

“I do not think that is a fair comparison,” Mihris chided, flashing Thanduwen a smile as she tossed a few misshapen cuts of meat into the boiling pot over the fire. “What happened to my clan is… regrettable, terrible. But I can still keep the Old Ways as best I can, live my life on my own terms. You have been forced to walk among Outsiders, abandon your people, face this threat that no one—not even our Keepers—would have been prepared for.” 

That soured Thanduwen’s mirth a little. It wasn’t that Mihris was wrong, but it was certainly sobering to hear a girl who had lost her entire Clan say that she would still prefer that fate to Thanduwen’s. It wasn’t all bad, she reasoned. She still harbored the hope that one day, she would be able to return to Clan Lavellan, but the news that Clan Virnehn had been wiped out had her once again wary of her own Clan’s fate. What might befall them, she wondered, because of the notoriety Thanduwen had attained herself? She sliced the potato in her hands carefully, her movements slow as she considered Mihris’ words. Would she trade fates, if given a chance? She did not think that was a choice she could make, the cost of her Clan for her freedom. But she was pulled from her thoughts by Mihris again, reaching over to place her bloodied hand gently over Thanduwen’s as it held the knife. Thanduwen looked up at her.

“I am glad it is you, though,” she added, her voice warm and sobering at once. “I think you will make our People proud.”

Thanduwen could hardly look at her. She kept diverting her eyes between the knife in her hands, the cubed potato, Mihris’ hand on hers. She thought about that a lot—whether or not her Clan would be proud of her, when everything was over. More often than not, she thought they would not be. She had little choice in the matter of joining the Inquisition; she liked to pretend she’d done it of her own free will, but she knew she’d had little choice in the matter, really. She did not like to think of the other things she would have little choice in, the ways she might be forced to betray the trust and the faith her people had in her. Mihris had only been with her a day. She knew so little about what the Inquisition was doing, or what might come in the following months. But no matter how naive it was, her approval meant a great deal to Thanduwen.

She looked back into Mihris’ face, passing her a smile, as somber as it was grateful. “Thank you.”

Mihris returned her smile, patted her hand gently, and then withdrew, back to the task of making a mess of the rabbits they’d caught earlier. Thanduwen tossed the potatoes in the pot, and threw in some of the herbs she’d collected earlier. As Mihris finished up with her task, she passed a glance around the camp. Cassandra and Varric had retreated to another side of the clearing, giving her and Mihris some degree of privacy. Undoubtedly this was intentional; it was more comfortable by the fire, and the both of them would usually sit beside it in the evenings. She would have to thank them for that, later. Not far from them, Solas sat, meditating—likely walking strange paths in the Fade, beyond the Veil, collecting artifacts and stories.

Mihris followed her gaze, and asked, “Is he asleep, like that?”

“Oh, no, not really. Well, sort of?” Thanduwen replied, squinting at Solas thoughtfully before turning back to Mihris. “It’s fascinating—he’s a Dreamer, but if he’s to be believed, he can enter the Beyond and navigate its paths far better than any Dreamer I’ve ever met. It does not feel quite honest, to call it ‘sleeping,’ what he does.”

Mihris looked over at him for a time, then made a few final cuts in the meat in front of her, tossing it into the pot before responding. “He reminds me of someone I used to know. Another Dalish mage. A Dreamer,” she added, dipping her hands into a pail of water beside the fire, washing the blood and bits of offal off her hands. “He is like us, and yet not like us. I do not understand how you trust him as you do.”

“He has proven his trustworthiness,” Thanduwen was quick to counter. “If we close the Breach, if we do anything we set out to do, it will be because of his help.” Then, her tone softening, she added, “And his company has brought me great comfort, on this peculiar path I walk.”

Mihris passed her a conspiratorial glance that had the heat rising in her neck. She’d given away more than she intended. Thankfully, Mihris was graceful enough not to push the matter. “What other help will you seek, I wonder, in closing the Breach? What alliances of convenience will you forge?”

“I do not know. Truthfully, I leave the matters of politics in the hands of our diplomat, whenever possible.”

“But as Varric said, _you_ are their Herald,” she said, emphasizing her point, her gaze piercing when she looked at Thanduwen. “You are the one they send. It is you, not your diplomat, who is here to confer with the rebel mages.”

“I suppose,” Thanduwen replied, but did not feel inclined to add more. Half the reason she enjoyed Mihris’ company was to talk about things other than Inquisition affairs; she was not keen, now, to talk strategy with her new friend. But when Mihris spoke again, she did so in a tone that was forced, trying too hard to be casual when it was anything but, some other purpose or intent behind her question:

“Do you think there will come a time when you will have to work with the Orlesians?”

It was an odd question, and Thanduwen sensed something more behind it. “I don’t see why,” she said. “Not as things stand, anyway. The Breach is in Ferelden. I suppose, after it is closed, we may travel to Orlais to close whatever rifts were opened there.” She did not entirely believe that to be true. She had taken in Sera and Vivienne partially because she expected more complications from the neighboring Empire. But she did not see the harm in a little misdirection. “Why do you ask?”

Mihris laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “You would not believe me if I told you.”

“Lethallan,” Thanduwen replied, chastising and reassuring at once. “I will believe you.”

Mihris looked reluctant, but at Thanduwen’s words, her expression became something else: resigned, weary. “When I told you what had happened to my clan… it was more complicated than that.”

Thanduwen gave a wry smile. “I imagined as much.”

But she was not prepared for Mihris’ response. She turned to Thanduwen and favored her with a dark look. “How much do you know about the Orlesian Civil War?”

Though she couldn’t be sure why, it made Thanduwen uneasy. “I confess to knowing very little.”

“You are happier, not knowing,” Mihris said, turning her eyes away from her. She adjusted her posture, bringing her knees up to her chest, shifting so that the front of her body was facing the fire. “I would not burden you with it if I did not think the knowledge might serve you or save you, later. The shemlen, they covet power. They would destroy those who keep it from them, or do not aid them in their pursuit of it. You should learn this.” 

Mihris paused, her eyes squeezed shut, as if summoning up the reserves of strength needed to continue the story. No doubt the telling would be painful. It was not unlikely that Thanduwen was the first person she’d spoken to about the trauma of it since it had happened. Thanduwen wanted to tell her how brave she was, how strong; she did not, for fear of sounding patronizing. But the truth of the matter was, no matter how long ago the loss had been, if she were to lose her Clan as Mihris had, she did not think she would be capable of dealing with it nearly so well as Mihris was. For that alone the girl deserved better than to be wandering the world alone.

Mihris opened her eyes, and continued. “The Empress of Orlais came to us when the war began, seeking an alliance against another shem noble who would have stolen the throne from under her. She could not understand why our Clan was so hesitant to help her.” Here, Mihris gave a mirthless laugh. “The centuries of broken promises and accords between the shemlen and our people did not matter to her. She seemed to think _us_ to be the foolish ones, for refusing the help she offered, as if she would not rescind it the moment it became politically inconvenient for her. As her palace at Halamshiral was not built on foundations of elven blood and the betrayals and broken promises of shemlen.”

She exhaled deeply, then continued. “It is true, what I said. My Keeper had summoned a demon. I see the foolishness of it now, but before the shems came, we had the demon trapped. I have no way of knowing, but I do not believe it would have escaped on its own. When my Keeper did not promise the Empress the aid of our clan, her company attacked us. Half of my clan lay dead by the hand of her chevalier before the demon was even freed. I saw him cut down the man I loved. And that same chevalier freed the demon; the demon Imshael returned to finish the job the chevalier had started, killing whomever the Empress had not already cut down in her escape.”

Thanduwen was silent, watching her. She could hardly imagine the burden of being, in a sense, the last of her kind. Mihris was clearly an adult, but still, she seemed too young to have seen so much. She wanted to reach out to her, wrap an arm around her, comfort her; but Mihris seemed deep in the throes of her recollection, in some dark place. She was not sure such contact would be welcome; she did not want to overstep her bounds.

“Ame as ir abelas, lethallan,” she said, quietly. “The burden you carry… it must be so heavy.”

Mihris stared into the fire. No hollow laughs, no jaded smiles. Then, she leaned back,planting her hands on the ground behind her and tilting her face up to the sky. “It’s inexhaustible. This well of… grief, and despair within me. And once I begin to think about it, it is difficult not to keep descending into it, further and further.” She turned to Thanuwen, her eyes searching. “You must know what that’s like. The way the pain can be so persistent, relentless. I can’t imagine the horror of the things you’ve seen. But I know how it stalks, lurks, lingers, always threatening to overwhelm you again.”

She was right. The image of the Temple of Sacred ashes keeping her awake at night. The blank space in her memory, the absence probably more horrifying than whatever had really happened to her. And there was more, she was sure, to come. But she did not say anything in kind. Instead, she only picked herself up, shifting closer to Mihris, plopping herself gracelessly down next her in the dirt.

“I am sorry, if it is difficult to hear about,” Mihris said, quickly. “I… haven’t spoken of it to anyone, since it happened.”

“Din!” Thanduwen was quick to reply, turning her head to look at her. The last thing she wanted was to make Mihris feel uncomfortable. “No, I… I want to hear about it. You should not have to carry it alone.”

But her reassurances meant little. The young woman did not seem any less agitated than she had before. Mihris gave her a half-hearted smile, then turned back to the fire. She began twisting her hands in front of her, her face torn. It was almost funny. Cullen, Solas, Vivienne—all of her companions in the Inquisition were always more than eager to tell her what they thought of things, for better or for worse. Mihris’ reluctance might have almost been refreshing if she did not look so distraught by it.

Softly, she asked her, “Mihris, what is it?”

“There’s more to it,” she began, the movements of her hands slowing. “More than the pain. It does bring me comfort, to unburden myself of some of it, but that is not why I have told you; I am trying to warn you.” She looked past Thanduwen, her eyes once again flashing uneasily between Cassandra, Solas. (Varric, she did not seem to know what to make of; if she was as cautious of him, it did not show.) “I cannot speak for the ones with which you travel. For better or for worse, you have chosen to trust them, at least enough to lay your head down at night in their company. But you must be wary. You cannot afford to trust everyone you meet.”

But her eyes seemed to hover on Solas. Thanduwen could tell she was looking at him without following her gaze, cognizant, as always, of where he sat in relation to her, the distance between them. Something else, another warning balancing on the tip of her tongue.

“And… if you do go to Orlais… there was an elf. A flat-ear. I do not know what became of her after we parted, but if you must go among the Orlesians—if you are swept up into their vile game—you would do well to seek her out. Her name is Briala. She is… more worthy of your trust than the others.” Then, after a moment of hesitation, “And she has a very powerful weapon at her disposal, though I am not certain that she will permit you to use it.”

“A weapon?” Thanduwen asked, curious. “What kind of weapon?”

“An eluvian. Well, several.”

That had her recoiling in surprise, screwing up her face in skepticism. “An eluvian?” she asked. She had heard of the mirrors; Clan Sabrae had warned everyone about them at the last Arlathven. It was the eluvian that had given the Warden Commander the taint, and claimed the life of one of the Clan’s hunters. They were to be avoided; beyond that, she knew little about them. “How can an eluvian be a weapon?”

“Keeper Thelhen became obsessed with them after the Arlathven,” she said, turning to Thanduwen with a mournful gaze. “We’d seen one, you see, in the Dales; he had summoned the demon Imshael to help him restore it. Clan Sabrae made it sound like they were broken, or unusuable, but they did not know what they were for. In order to work an eluvian, as with any other door, you simply require the key. Briala has such a key.”

“A door?” Thanduwen asked. “To where?”

“I don’t know,” Mihris confessed, turning back to the fire. “Paths. The Eluvians are a way of travelling… between places. Faster than a man on horseback, faster than a raven flies. I believe she intended to use them to bring relief to the elves of the alienages, yet they could be put to any number of uses. But she would not share the knowledge with me, or any other Dalish blood. She does not have a very high opinion of us, for which I fear Clan Virnehn is to blame. But perhaps… perhaps she will speak to you,” she said, flashing the briefest look to Thanduwen out of the corner of her eye. “Perhaps you could prove to her that you are more worthy of her trust.”

Thanduwen wondered at that. True, she did not harbor the same resentment towards city elves that some Dalish did—Clan Lavellan had taken in more than one elf fleeing the alienates of the Free Marches in her life time, and they had all become greatly cherished members of the Clan—but she was certain that alone would not be enough to convince this Briala of an alliance, if it ever came to that.

Her rumination were interrupted by the sound of Mihris sniffing audibly. She leaned forward over the fire, stirring the stew as it slowly began to simmer. Her body language suggested that the discussion had concluded. Thanduwen had so many questions: how would she find this Briala? How did Mihris know about the Eluvians? Had she travelled between them herself? But she did not want to press Mihris further. It had clearly been difficult for her to tell Thanduwen what she had already. 

Mihris leaned back from the hearth. And as though they’d known one another for years, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Mihris leaned in close to her, resting her head on Thanduwen’s shoulder.

A lump formed in her throat. She hadn’t been this close to anyone, hadn’t had so much physical contact in months. As she had been on so many occasions that day, she was reminded of her Clan. How many times had she leaned on her brother like this? The thought of him made something in her chest ache. She had never been apart from him for more than a week before. Where was he, now? Darting among the tree tops like a squirrel, no doubt; or snoring softly in an aravel, surround by their family.

She shifted her body weight, then dipped her chin, pressing her cheek against the top of Mihris’ head. For a time, they sat in silence. It was enough, the company of another, the understanding they shared, the both of them so far from their homes, the difference being that Mihris did not have a home left to return to. When all of this was over, Thanduwen could not help but wonder if she would be in the same situation, cast out by her Clan, or some terrible violence brought down upon them because of her own reputation, what price she might pay for her actions. 

But to her mind, Mihris had done nothing wrong. Mihris was not tied to the Chantry, nor the fate of the Breach. She did not deserve her loneliness.

Murmuring softly against her scalp, she asked Mihris, “What will you do, now?”

Her voice was weary when she responded; Thanduwen could feel her jaw move against Thanduwen’s shoulder as she spoke. “In truth? I do not know. If the Inquisition is seeking out these artifacts, perhaps my energy is more wisely put to use elsewhere, with other preoccupations. But I do not know what I would do, or where to go next. I have been… wandering, for a long time.”

“Ir abelas, lethallan,” she responded. Then, decided, she asked her, “Do you have a map?”

Slowly, Mihris sat up, picking herself off Thanduwen’s shoulder to look at her, apprehensive. “Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

Mihris gave her another searching glance, then began digging through her pockets. As she did so, Thanduwen reached towards their pile of dry wood that they had collected for the fire. She selected a smaller stick—bone dry, and slender—and placed it into the hearth as Mihris searched. 

Mihris handed her a well-worn, dirty map; Thanduwen took it and spread it out before her in the dirt. She took the stick from the fire, tapping out the embers, and used the dark tip to mark up the parchment. By the light of the fire, she began to draw a charcoal path, sketching landmarks, scribbling notes. 

“This is where Clan Lavellan was when I last left them,” she said, pointing a finger, black with charcoal dust, in a spot just north of the Vimmark Mountains. Her finger left a perfect print on the page. “It was some time ago now, back in Bloomingtide. They will not still be there, but you can start looking at that spot, near this gorge,” she said, pointing to an inexpert but practical illustration of the shape of the cleft between the mountains. Then, after a moment of hesitation, she reached around her neck, pulling a string twine over her head. On the string, tied tightly, was a small, inconspicuous ring. She held it in her hand for a moment, relishing the comfort of its familiar weight, before passing both the ring and the map to Mihris.

“They will have left signs of where they went next—runes. Wearing the ring will make them visible to you.”

Mihris looked at her, incredulous. Her eyes were wide in the darkness. Her palm was still open; her gaze flickered between the ring in her hand and Thanduwen’s face. “You cannot give me this.”

It was highly unusual, that was undeniable. Even though they were united by circumstance, there was always as much wariness as there was excitement when one clan met another outside of the Arlathven. The markers Clan Lavellan had left behind were for Thanduwen’s use alone, back when they had thought she would be returning from the Conclave with the coming of autumn. 

But she had not come back. And although she hoped that the Breach would soon be closed and she would be free to return to them, she knew deep down it was unlikely. Some of her clanmates would no doubt be displeased to learn that she had guided Mihris to them in this way, but she had every faith that, in time, Mihris would prove a valuable addition. She was a mage of no small talent, after all; in her absence, her clan could certainly use another one of those. More than that, Thanduwen could not leave Mihris to wander the Hinterlands, aimlessly. She had seen the corpses in the Fallow Mire, and the heard tales from the people of the Hinterlands of how Templars had killed elves on sight for something so harmless as chopping wood, “mistaking” a woodcutter’s axe for a staff.

She would not leave Mihris here.

She reached over, gently, and took Mihris’ hand, closing her fingers over the ring. “I was Keeper Deshanna’s first,” she said. “They no longer have me. I imagine the Second, a hotheaded young thing name Ithras, has taken my place. But still, it is unlikely they would turn away another capable mage, to help with some of the responsibilities that I can no longer attend to. Tell Keeper Deshanna that I sent you, show her the ring.” Then she added, after a moment, “You should not be alone.”

“But—how will you find them, again, when all this is over?”

Thanduwen almost cringed at that; she smiled hastily, to cover it up. The same thoughts had been on her mind. But there was a mark on her hand, and though the pain of it had lessened, there was still the very real possibility that the mark, or using it to close the Breach, would kill her. She wanted to go home, but in the back of her mind she knew she might never get a chance. There was no point, holding onto relics she may never have use of, when Mihris could use them far better. 

Of course, it did not seem productive to share such morbid imaginings with Mihris. “I’m the _Herald of Andraste_ ,” she responded, finally, a playful note of sarcasm in her voice as she used her title. “I’ll find a way home, when the time comes.”

“Ma serannas,” Mihris said, the words sliding out of her on a rush of breath so relieved and grateful and forceful that they were almost a whisper. “Your generosity shames me.” She took her hand out from under Thanduwen’s, and placed the ring around her neck. Then, she hesitated, her hands hovering over her collar before diving back into her pockets, producing a small amulet. It was not of Dalish make, and unlike anything Thanduwen had ever seen before.

“I found this, back in the Cave,” she said, quietly, extending it out to her. The metal gleamed in the light of the fire. “It is all I can give you in repayment of the mighty gift you have given me.”

“Ma serannas,” Thanduwen said in kind, taking the amulet from her. The truth was Mihris owed her nothing; whatever this amulet was, she doubted it would prove of more value than the information Mihris had already given her. But she would not spurn the gift.

With the seriousness out of the way, their talk gradually turned to lighter things. They shared stories of their clans, spoke of the places they’d travelled and the things they had seen. For a time, in the dark, they allowed themselves to be merry in the pleasure of one another’s company. They both knew, though it went unspoken, that it would be quite some time before either of them met another Dalish elf again. 

That night, Thanduwen feel asleep outside of the tent, her back to the columns of rock that ringed the camp, and Mihris’ head on her shoulder. The hearth smoldered as the stars crossed the sky. At dawn, they were discovered in exactly the same place, still leaning on one another, the pink blush of morning creeping over the granite walls of the camp to kiss the faces of the two sleeping women: both equally lost, both bearing terrible burdens, but having found, for a brief time, comfort in the company of the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ma nuvenin, da’en. | As you wish, child.  
> Sathan. | Please  
> Ethas. | You are safe.  
> Ame as ir abelas, lethallan. | I am so very sorry, friend.  
> Din. | No.  
> Ma serannas. | Thank you.
> 
> Credit to the absolutely brilliant fenxshiral for the Elvhen & translations. (They did not provide me with the conjugations, I guessed at some, so any errors are 100% mine and not their’s.)
> 
> Mihris deserved so much better, and I will never stop being bitter about it.
> 
> And also, apologies to any readers who are following on the time it took me to roll out this update... I am trying to be fairly regular but life does not often cooperate. Hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> A NOTE ON WARNINGS: I am trying to put appropriate warnings for everything I write in the summary and notes of each chapter but have not published my work on Ao3 before and so I may miss something I should have warned. If there is something that I have not tagged that you think could be triggering and/or upsetting for readers, please let me know and I will amend it immediately.


	6. Under the Shadow of Doubt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisition makes their way to Redcliffe. 
> 
> Warnings: Explicit language, mentions of poaching/animal violence.
> 
> Elvish translations in the end notes.

Mihris departed the next morning.

Much to Cassandra’s disapproval (silent though it was) Thanduwen was sure to laden her down with as much dried fruit and salted meats as she could carry before she left. She had no doubt that Mihris could fend for herself—that she had survived on her own since her departure from Orlais was proof of that—but still, Thanduwen felt fiercely protective of her. She would give Mihris every advantage she could before sending her off on her journey north, in pursuit of Clan Lavellan.

They only parted when Cassandra and the others were ready to set out for the day, but even that was far later than usual. Thanduwen had overslept, and Varric had taken far longer than he usual did to get ready. (As it turned out, he had been dawdling on purpose, to give the two women more time with one another; later, when Varric confessed to this, Thanduwen had embraced him so hard she’d nearly smothered him.) 

But their parting inevitable. Of course, she could have asked Mihris to join the Inquisition. The thought had occurred to her, but she had immediately dismissed it. The idea did not sit right with her. Mihris had already been through so much. She far preferred the idea that Mihris would make her way to the Free Marches, and find a family in the one that Thanduwen had been forced to leave behind.

“Ma melava halani,” Mihris said, hugging her one final time. The embrace held nothing back; they clasped one another tightly, Mihris burying her face in Thanduwen’s neck. “Ma serannas.”

“The journey is long, but it will be worth it, I promise,” Thanduwen whispered back, her mouth close to Mihris’ ear. “I know that you will find them, and they will welcome you as their own.”

Mihris pulled away, smiling brightly, gratefully. For once, she looked young, not aged beneath the cloud of weariness that grief and trauma had set about her. “I will tell them that you are well, when I find them,” she said, confidently. “I will tell them… how proud they should be of you.”

Then, one last time, she extended her arm; without hesitation, Thanduwen reached for it, clasping Mihris’ elbow and drawing her close, the both of them dipping their heads towards one another in the Dalish gesture.

“Dareth shiral, lethallan,” said Thanduwen, softly. “Sule tael tasala.”

“Sule melan’an,” Mihris responded. “Tuelanen ama na.”

Thanduwen could only laugh in response. The farewell was appropriate; she would certainly need their protection in the weeks to come.

Then they parted, taking opposite paths along the road. As discussed, Mihris would travel along the East Road to the Imperial Highway, and pay the fare to ride across the Waking Sea from Amaranthine to Ostwick. The Inquisition headed in the opposite direction, back towards the crossroads, but that did not stop Thanduwen from passing glances over her shoulder as Mihris walked into the distance. She felt a crushing sadness as the young mage disappeared, past the arms of the valley and beyond her sight. 

“So, did you two enjoy your sleepover last night?” Varric asked, walking up alongside her and grinning.

“Very much,” she said. “And as the Dalish often do when different clans meet, we exchanged relics.” Then, fishing in her pockets, she withdrew the amulet Mihris had given to her, tossing it casually to Solas with a self-satisfied grin. He caught it ably, but blinked, as if in surprise, studying the token in his hands.

“What did you trade in return for it?” he asked, looking at her quizzically.

It was a fair question; it wasn’t as if Thanduwen was dripping with old elven artifacts and Dalish relics. She was confident she had made the right choice to give Mihris the ring, but it was still a sore subject, one she was not eager to discuss. Though the ring had been a light thing, barely enough to notice, in its absence she remembered it as heavier, weightier; her neck felt light without it. “It hardly matters, does it? You’ve got what you wanted.”

Varric had to laugh. “You mean to say you gave her something _other_ than half of our provisions?”

“We gave her far less than half,” Solas corrected, before turning back to Thanduwen. “Still, it begs the question of what else you parted with in exchange.”

She waved her hands vaguely, dismissively, fending off their questions. “It was a thing that was precious to me personally, nothing the Inquisition will miss,” she said, and she would not be pressed on the issue. The three of them made idle conversation for a time, before Cassandra turned back to them, urging them to quicken their pace. She had not been pleased with their belated departure. 

Eventually they fell in line. By the time they were nearly at the crossroads, Varric and Cassandra had outpaced Solas and herself. She hung back deliberately, passing glances ahead and trying to assess whether or not they were out of earshot. She felt badly for hiding things from Varric, but still did not wholly trust Cassandra. And in any case, the information she was about to share with Solas may not be of use to them. She told herself that she was only revealing it to Solas for academic reasons. It was certainly the kind of thing that he wound find interesting, whether or not they ever acted on the information. 

Solas looked at her curiously, and when she responded, she dropped the volume of her voice, a hushed tone. “It was worth the loss, what I traded her; she gave me far more than that amulet.”

“What else did she give you? She was traveling very light.” There was as much curiosity in his question as intensity. She thought back again to how he’d spent the previous evening meditating, walking the fade. A part of her wondered if it was possible that something he’d seen there had hinted at her conversation with Mihris. She wasn’t even sure that was _possible_ , but honestly, she wouldn’t have been surprised.  
  
“Information,” she said, quietly, keeping her gaze trained forward on Cassandra, to see if she was glancing back in their direction. Not that there would really be anything suspicious about the two of them, whispering in the back; they already spent most of their time traveling conversing together on topics Cassandra had little interest in. “There’s an elf in Orlais. Mihris said that she’s managed to…” —here she paused, searching for the right word— “restore, or unlock, a network of eluvians.”

Solas’ expression changed in an instant. His curiosity gave way to his most piercing look, intense and calculating. “Is that so?” he asked, but he spoke plainly, not a trace of shock in his voice.

It was her turn to be curious. “You don’t seem the least bit surprised by that.”

His back straightened. He turned his eyes forward and paused for a moment, as if carefully considering his words. As far as she knew, there hadn’t been a working eluvian in all of Thedas for years, quite probably ages. Before Mihris had told her, she hadn’t even known the purpose of the ancient mirrors. She wondered what Solas had seen of them in the Fade; if he’d even seen this woman, Briala, or some reflection of her, walking the paths that Mihris had described. Surely the unlocking of an eluvian after centuries without use was the kind of thing that was worthy of the attention of spirits.

“I have been aware of the eluvians for some time,” he finally responded, turning back to her. “And I am familiar with their purpose. But I did not expect anyone to find a way to use them. The discovery is… significant.” He turned his gaze to the evergreens that towered above them, squinting in the sunlight. When he spoke, he did so casually. “Will you seek this woman out? Briala, did you say her name was?”

“I don’t know,” Thanduwen said. “Not unless I have no other choice. I’m not keen to go back to Orlais after what happened in Val Royeaux. But it is good to know we might have an ally there, if we must return.”

“And this does not give you sufficient incentive to return?” he said, turning, and now to match his attentive gaze was his most charming smile. It was both amused and slightly mischievous; the corners of his mouth pulling back to reveal a flash of teeth between his words. “You are always asking about our people, listening to stories of what I have seen. Do you not desire to walk these paths yourself, to be present at the moment of discovery, not merely hearing a secondhand account from me long after the fact?”

“But you are such an excellent storyteller,” she said, leaning in closer to him and tilting her face upwards to match his smile with her own. “Part of the pleasure in the stories is listening to you tell them; you do not do yourself nor your voice enough credit.” Then, before the familiar choked feeling (that stifled hunger) had an opportunity to arise in the space between them, she backed away, her smile faltering as she gestured at Cassandra, walking several paces ahead of them.

“As she made clear this morning, we can hardly afford spare time for farewells, never mind an excursion to Orlais for what—at this point—would be a solely scholarly exercise. And in any case, Mihris seemed to think that Briala was not eager to share the use of the network with anyone—least of all, I would imagine, those who simply want to behold it for curiosity’s sake.”

“No,” he said slowly, a raised eyebrow. “I imagine she would not.” He paused, looking at her with a distinctly perplexed expression on his face. It was a rare look for him. “Why didn’t you ask the Dalish girl to join us, considering her experience? She could have proven very useful in locating and negotiating with this Briala, if the time ever came.”

“ _Mihris_ ,” Thanduwen said, using her name emphatically, “has been through enough already. And you are being awfully insistent.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He responded, a smile tugging at his lips again. “Can you imagine the labyrinth they create? Hidden roads leading the way to ancient ruins and pieces of lost history. You are the one who keeps insisting the Dalish are making every effort to reclaim the history of Elvhenan. If you are surprised at my eagerness, I assure you, I am equally baffled by your reluctance.”

“Labyrinth,” she repeated, rolling her tongue around the word. “Who can say what we might discover within its depths? Relics, memories lost to the ages. Don’t misunderstand, Solas,” she said, flashing him a crooked grin, “between the knowledge we could uncover, and the distinct pleasure of your company, I find the idea terribly enticing. If anything, I fear that if you and I found our way through one of those mirrors, we might never come back.” She looked forward, and her voice took on a suggestive lilt. “The things we might get up to, just the two of us, in those secret pathways. How that voice of yours might resound and echo through the space…”

He looked at her, his expression unreadable. But as he turned his gaze forward, his tongue darted out of his mouth, moistening his lips. When he replied, the tone of his voice matched hers: a rolling cadence, something evocative and dark. “If your intent was to discourage me, you are doing a poor job of it.”

“Discourage you?” she said, full of mirth. “No, that was not my intention. I simply meant to say that, for now, it might not be wise for us to go traipsing off together.” Then, she added, watching his face out of the corner of her eye for any reaction: “Perhaps one day, we might have that luxury. When all of this is over.”

He paused for a minute, then an unsatisfying “perhaps” rumbled out of him, his. Off he was, to that secret place where she couldn’t follow him, where he collected all the intentions and plans he did not share with her. 

She knew they were there. She didn’t know what it was he thought about in secret, but she could feel the shape of it, the space he walked circles around and never shared, how adroitly he avoided giving her answers when he did not want to. When he looked away from her and out at the landscape as they moved back to the crossroads, his gaze was far and away, somewhere else; for all the good his company was, he may as well have been walking the paths of the Fade. Only someone searching for something with great urgency, she thought, would spend so much time that way.

One day, she mused, perhaps he’d tell her what it was he was looking for.

 

 

The days following Mihris’ departure were long and each one brought its own ordeals, but they accomplished much, both for the Hinterlands and the Inquisition. Thanduwen was making good on the promise Cassandra had made her several weeks ago: they had returned to the Hinterlands, and she would do all she could to help the refugees there. They had cleared out the hideouts of both the apostates and the templars, and while there were still a few rebels wandering the Hinterlands in search of trouble, eliminating their base of operations had crippled their ability to wreak the same kind of havoc on the region that they had since the annulment of the Nevarran Accord. 

Soon, they hoped, trade in the area would resume. The civilians were badly in need of it. In the meantime, the Inquisition did what they could, sharing meat and cloth with the refugees. In a few months, it would be winter. Though it was not the Inquisitions’ express purpose to support the refugees, Thanduwen insisted that whatever time, strength or resources could be spared would be.

The effort did not go unnoticed. Josephine had said that the Inquisition needed more influence; their arrival had hardly been noted, but now the Inquisition’s banners flew across the Hinterlands, and their name was quick to the lips of those whom they had helped.

They had met with Leliana’s Grey Warden, Blackwall, and sent him ahead to Haven. The Wardens were a mysterious order, and Leliana had far more familiarity with them from her years during and after the Fifth Blight. It was thought best that he travel back to meet with her, and he set out for Haven with an escort of her scouts a few days later. For her part, Thanduwen was not overly optimistic about the aid he could provide; he seemed woefully uninformed about where the rest of his order had gone, and did not seem to know why they had left to begin with. Perhaps Leliana could get more information out of him than she herself had; that was certainly her area of expertise, anyway. Thanduwen was merely thankful that they had not gone out of their way to find him.

They had also reached the horsemaster. A deal was struck with Dennet immediately. The building of the watchtowers commenced under the supervision of Corporal Vale. In the meanwhile, Thanduwen, Cassandra, Varric and Solas had travelled to the north to root out a pack of feral wolves, driven mad by the Breach. As they had made their way to their den, Thanduwen had been full of apprehension. She could not help but wonder if the white wolf would be among their number. But upon facing the wolves, it became apparent that whatever the white wolf may have been, it was not a witless creature under the Breach’s influence. It was far too self-possessed. The wolves in the thrall of the terror demon north of the farmlands made that abundantly clear. 

It was in this fashion that they carved a path to Redcliffe. 

The road leading to the village was flooded and soggy. As they approached the gates, tattered and time-worn banners decorated the road, displaying the Ferelden coat of arms. To her surprise, Thanduwen realized it was the first time she had seen such a banner in the Hinterlands and not, in fact, an Inquisition’s heraldry. It troubled her, but not nearly as much as what awaited them at the gates.

There was shouting, a soldier barking commands. The reason for this became clear as the road rounded a corner: just outside the gates to the village, a rift had opened.

Despite her best efforts, Thanduwen could not help but smirk, a little bit. She thought of Speaker Anais and the cultists in Winterwatch Tower: how skeptical they had been of the Inquisition, and how readily they were convinced after she had closed the rift in their stronghold. Of course, just like an opened wound, an opened rift was not a cause for celebration; still, Thanduwen was grateful for the opportunity to show the mages exactly what kind of help the Inquisition could provide before even crossing the threshold of the gates. Grand Enchanter Fiona had already seemed happy to discuss an alliance, of course, but such a practical demonstration of the anchor’s powers certainly couldn’t hurt the strength of the Inquisition’s position in the coming negotiations.

Her overconfidence would be swiftly rectified.

As soon as she was in range, Thanduwen thrust her staff forward, catching a shade squarely between its shoulders with a bolt of lightning that sent it staggering backwards, stunned by the force of the blow. She felt the familiar energy of one of Solas’ barriers going up around her as she moved through her practiced stances, swinging her staff forward before pulling it back towards her body, using her momentum to spin around and lunge forward again. The spell sent another shade up in flames. She kept her focus on the rift and the demons around her, spared little attention for the periphery. No wolves would distract her today.

Varric whooped behind her, eager as ever to get into some trouble; she could not see the bolts as they flew through the air, but she saw the demons stagger under their impact as Varric met his mark. Ahead of them, Cassandra cut the demons down blow by blow as Thanduwen rained magic upon them with Solas; lightning, fire, and hail. Under the swing of Cassandra’s mace, the last remaining shade, frozen by one of Solas’ spells, shattered with a sound like breaking glass. 

The area around the rift began to warp and bubble, the telltale signs of more demons trying to slip through. Thanduwen swung her arms outward; the dispel charm caught not one but two rupture points, dissipating them before a demon could manifest. But a moment later, the second wave of demons breached the Veil, shades and wraiths and terrors spilling from the other side.

Which was when things started to go wrong. 

Thanduwen was mid-form, bringing her staff forward, preparing to plant it firmly on the ground when she heard Cassandra shout—not her usual war or victory cry, but a genuine sound of distress. Such a thing was so rare, it took her a second to realize what she’d heard; the motion of her arms faltered and the staff did not hit the ground quite as forcefully as it should have, and the lightning that struck the nearest shade was but a weak shock. But Thanduwen’s eyes were fixed on Cassandra. She was circling around a terror demon, mace and shield at the ready, but she was moving absurdly slow. 

Thanduwen paused, still planted in her stance, watching her. What was she doing? She opened her mouth to shout at her—an action she would almost never have the gall to do ordinarily—but before she could find the words for a proper rebuke, she saw the Seeker, _very slowly_ , as she swung her arm back to hack at the demon before her. But the preparation for the blow was far too sluggish to put any real force behind it. And it was then that she saw how, so gradually she had hardly noticed, Cassandra’s face had shifted into an expression of panic.

“Something’s wrong!” she shouted over her shoulder at Solas and Varric. “Help Cassandra! Take that thing down!”

Varric and Solas obliged, and the three of them began raining blows down on the terror demon. After several successful strikes (and one embarrassing miss on Thanduwen’s part, so distracted she was by whatever had happened to Cassandra) one final bolt to the head, aimed expertly by Varric, brought the thing down with a blood-curdling screech.

But Cassandra did not move any faster.

Thanduwen’s heart sunk.

“Look out!” 

Varric’s voice, and she soon realized why. A shade had circled behind her, more quickly and quietly than she had accounted for. She was relieved to find it was a few paces away, yet; but with a rising panic she realized it was moving much, much too quickly. 

Solas’ words from their first meeting occurred to her: _Demons are predictable far more often than they are adaptable_. 

Well. 

Not these ones.

The shade raised its hand to strike her, pulling its arm back with far more speed and agility than she had ever seen in such a demon before. But her expression was hard, determined. This one would not get the best of her, not like the terror demon had a few days ago.

She grasped her staff firmly and cut upwards in one swift, abrupt motion; her staff blade sliced cleaning up the front of it, and sent the thing reeling backwards, howling. But the shade did not take long to recover; immediately it lunged forward, claws reaching for her. Thanduwen dodged the charging demon with a clean sidestep, and swung the blade of her staff downwards once more, cutting across the shade’s shoulders, stepping backwards and away from it as she did so.

With her last step, something changed.

She did not feel any different. As far as she could tell, she did not even try to _move_ any differently. But when she sank back into a more defensible, stable stance and swung her staff forward, she did so with a velocity she had never before possessed. The crack of lightening struck the shade and smote it where it stood so fast even she was startled, and she had cast the spell. She turned her head: with a few swift swings of her staff, she began attacking a nearby wisp that had turned its attention to Solas. She had fired off three spells before Solas had even the time to complete one.

As soon as the wisp had dissipated, she heard Varric’s voice again. “Use the mark!”

With another brisk turn, she faced the rift; she raised her hand, and the energy between the rift and herself surged and dissipated quickly, but just as powerfully as always, the rift closing with a neat and abrupt little _pop._

The whole thing left her feeling more than a little lightheaded.

For a moment, after the rift had closed, everyone was quiet. No one, it seemed, knew much what to make of what had just happened. It was one of Redcliffe’s soldiers who spoke first; she commanded the gates be opened. In the silence that followed, the creaking of the portcullis as it was raised seemed unnaturally loud.

“What _was_ that?” Cassandra asked, still fixed to the spot where she’d fought. She had not yet lowered her mace, and seemed reluctant to do so.

Thanduwen couldn’t really blame her.

“That rift…” Cassandra asked, her voice filled with trepidation. “Was it altering the time around it?”

“That is certainly how it appeared,” Solas responded, coolly as ever. He had brought his hand to his face, and his thumb ran thoughtfully over the cleft of his chin at he stared at the space where the rift had been. (Leave it to Solas, reliable as always, to remain pensive and fascinated in the face of what was quite likely the most terrifying aspect of the Breach to date.)

“Somethings not right,” Thanduwen said. Like Cassandra, she had not yet sheathed her weapon. She clutched her staff in her hand tightly; the leather bands of her staff grip dug into the flesh of her palm.

“The veil is weaker here than in Haven,” Solas pondered aloud, still looking around them, as if the woods outside the village might hold some clue as to what had happened there. “And not merely weak, but altered in a way I have not seen before.”

“We do not know yet the full power of what these rifts can do,” Cassandra suggested, moving a little closer to her.

Thanduwen gave a gentle huff of frustration. “True as that may be, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would a rift be more powerful all the way out here, so far from the Breach? We haven’t come across anything like this before.”

Varric was the first to give voice to what they were all fearing, but dared not say aloud.

“Maybe it’s the mages.”

The thought was certainly an unsettling one, but there was no denying the coincidence that such a rift was found just outside the stronghold where the remaining rebel mages were taking refuge. She was not sure what to think: whether such a rift had formed because of the wealth of magic energy concentrated in the area, pressing against the Veil, or whether she suspected it was something the mages had done intentionally. She was not sure which was worse. She remembered Cullen’s words of caution echoing in her head; just the thought that he might have been even the slightest bit right made her stomach turn. But she would not change course now. In the very least, the Inquisition needed to know what was happening inside the walls of the village to cause this.

After a rather unsettling silence in which they all seemed to digest Varric’s suggestion with varying amounts of dread, Thanduwen sighed. “Come on. Let’s go find out what in Creation is going on.”

But they did not get far past the portcullis before an Inquisition scout approached them, running with a bit more urgency than Thanduwen would have liked. 

“Seeker Pentaghast,” he said, nodding in acknowledgement. “Herald of Andraste. We arrived two days ago, and spread word that the Inquisition was coming to Redcliffe. You should know… no one here was expecting us.” 

“No one?” Thanduwen asked, dubious. She couldn’t help but cross her arms over her chest.

“Not even Grand Enchanter Fiona?” Cassandra asked. 

“If she was,” the scout responded, “she hasn’t told anyone. But we’ve arranged to use the tavern for the negotiations. You should know—”

The scout was not cut off, but at the sight of another elf rushing towards them, he silenced himself. He was dressed in Circle robes, but the speed with which the scout had promptly shut up suggested he was not an ally.

“Agents of the Inquisition,” he said, smiling in greeting, “my apologies. My name is Lysas. Magister Gereon Alexius is in charge of Redcliffe now, but he is currently unavailable to greet you himself, and has many matter yet to see to before the day is through. Perhaps, if it does not inconvenience you, you might meet with him in the morning?”

The word Magister had her heart sinking in dread. Any hope she had of that not meaning what she thought it meant was firmly quashed when she heard Varric hissing behind her, in a none-too-subtle whisper, “Tevinter.”

She had to fight _very_ hard to keep the pained expression off her face in front of Lysas. But as upset as she was, she was also furious. Had Grand Enchanter Fiona abandoned the idea of an alliance with the Inquisition so easily? Her face was already twisting into something rude, but Cassandra must have seen the aggressive shift in her body language; before she could say respond to the mage, the Seeker had wrapped a firm hand around her forearm. 

Lysas did not fail to notice.

Thanduwen exhaled, willing her shoulders to drop into a more relaxed line. She reminded herself that she was here to support the Circle mages; Lysas was not her enemy, not yet. She looked up at Lysas, and favored him with a smile. It was sure to be seen as imitation of the real thing, but at least it was not impolite. Then she nodded her head in thanks. 

“The Inquisition is grateful for Magister Alexius’ generous offer to discuss terms with us in the morning. We will eagerly await an audience with him.”

Lysas seemed to relax at her acquiescence. “You must forgive us for our unpreparedness, but we were only given short notice of your arrival. I have been instructed to offer you rooms at the Gull and Lantern, if that pleases you. The accommodations are modest, to be sure, but they are at your disposal should you desire them.”

She paused, measuring the elf in front of her. As tempting as the offer was—it had been several weeks since she had slept in a bed—she could certainly do without. She doubted, anyway, the quality of the sleep she would get. No, she would much prefer to return to one of the Inquisition camps, where she could be certain that she and her companions would be _safe,_ and free to speak without concerning themselves about who else might be listening. By her estimation, they had a lot to discuss.

“Magister Alexius honors the Inquisition with his offer of hospitality,” Thanduwen replied, doing her very best to keep her voice neutral. “Nevertheless, we will depart for the night, and take rest at our camp. He can expect our return to Redcliffe in the morning.”

“Very well,” the elf replied, but did not take his leave. He watched them as they turned to go, exiting through the portcullis, winding back down the soggy road. As Thanduwen looked over her shoulder, as the road turned, she saw that he was still watching them, even as they rounded the bend and vanished from sight.

 

 

 

By the time they reached the camp at the outskirts of the crossroads, the sun had set. Twilight still hung over the landscape in all of its dusky blues and purples, the sky colored with the last of the light of the day.  

They had come most of the way in silence. Thanduwen forced them to walk at an almost brutal pace; they were not running, but walking quickly enough to exert themselves. She hoped, maybe, that if she tired herself out, she’d feel a little bit less enraged. 

Rage was no good for making reasonable decisions. 

The alliance with the mages had seemed a sure thing; that had been a central tenant of her argument with the Inquisition leaders. With Cullen. She felt far less sure of her decision now that the alliance was less certain. Had Grand Enchanter Fiona abandoned them? And the rift outside the village—was that the work of the mages, or the Magister, or something else yet to reveal itself? 

A stew had been set to cook over the fire. They did not always have such rich and hearty meals, but after the crushing disappointment of Redcliffe, Thanduwen needed the comfort. Cassandra sat on a crate beside the hearth, stirring the pot occasionally. She had changed into more casual clothing—her chainmail was removed—but she still wore her breastplate on top of her linen shirt. Her leather pants were in her lap; by the light of the fire, she was reinforcing the stitching that had come loose from the fighting of the day. 

It was a curious image. Cassandra was fierce, determined, adventurous… it was unusual to see her engage in such a domestic task, but as Thanduwen watched her, she stitched with a skillful hand and a surprising gentleness. But whether because of the way the light licked over her features from the fire, or the genuine exertion of the days’ efforts, she looked weary. 

Wordlessly, Thanduwen approached her, and sat on the ground beside her. For a long time, neither of them said anything. It was warm in front of the fire, and the camp was quiet. The smell of cooking vegetables and spices wafted towards them from the pot, mingled with the scent of charred pine.  

Thanduwen took a deep breath. She was not eager to have this conversation with Cassandra. She feared it would betray her weakness, her lack of resolve. But the events surrounding their arrival in Redcliffe had shaken her. As the only other high-ranking member of the Inquisition present, Thanduwen felt she owed it to Cassandra to discuss, at least for one final time, what their options were. 

She could not help the nagging doubt that had been set within her back at the village gates. The presence of the Magister had made her all the more determined to come to an agreement with the mages. But matters were now complicated in ways that she couldn’t fully wrap her head around, not yet. She knew what she wanted to do; she just was not sure if she— if the Inquisition—was capable of doing it, or whether or not it was a risk they would do better to avoid. 

And so, after a deep breath, she asked Cassandra: “Are you sure… that we should return to Redcliffe, in the morning?” 

Cassandra paused in her stitching, the rhythm of her movements briefly interrupted, but did not turn to look at Thanduwen. “Do you believe that we should not return?” 

Thanduwen brought her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The fingers of her right hand worried the fraying seams of her opposite sleeve. “If we go… if we find what I think we are going to find… I do not think I will be able to entertain any further notions about working with the Templars.” 

That got Cassandra’s attention. She turned her head, her right hand still paused, the raised needle glimmering faintly in the light of the flames. “Judging by the nature of your disagreement with Commander Cullen, I had thought that approaching the Templars was no longer an option for us to consider. I confess, I did not think it possible for you to be _more_ convinced of your chosen path than you already were. What has changed?” 

Thanduwen looked up at her, the sharp angles of her face lit so dramatically by the campfire. She did not seem dismissive, or upset, but genuinely curious. 

It was difficult to look at her—for a moment, Thanduwen turned her eyes away. Though it had taken some time for them to warm up to one another, Thanduwen almost begun to grow fond of her. She had not forgotten or forgiven her flaws, but still Thanduwen could not help but admire her for her strength, her determination, her resolve. They were qualities that she wished she possessed as plentifully. 

After a moment of stewing in her insecurity, she spoke. And once she began, her eyes did not waver from Cassandra’s once. 

“If we return to Redcliffe, I am almost certain we will discover that, one way or another, the mages have indebted themselves to a Tevinter magister. If that is true, he will have under his control what is more or less a standing army, squarely in the middle of Ferelden. And outside of the moral reservations I may have about that—and I can assure you, I have many—I think that, politically… I do not think it is something we can walk away from in good conscience. If we turn a blind eye to this threat, it could undo all the credibility we’ve built, all the work we’ve done. So, I am asking you, before it is too late for me to look away… is there anything else you would like to say that might persuade me to pursue the Templars instead?” 

Cassandra watched her for a minute, then turned back to her sewing. In the light of the fire, Thanduwen could almost swear that the smile on her face was…amused. 

“I had thought you wished to recruit the mages. You have made quite clear that you find them to be the more trustworthy and capable allies—never mind compelling moral convictions, whether or not I agree with them.” 

“I did,” Thanduwen replied, immediately. “I do.” Then, after a pause, “But you are the only other member of the council present. And I wanted to give you one last opportunity to help make a decision about what comes next.” 

At that, she was convinced Cassandra’s smile was one of amusement. 

“I appreciate the gesture,” Cassandra responded, turning back to her, “but you must know it to be an empty one. Perhaps I was the one to begin this Inquisition, but you have become too important for your opinions to go unheard. You ask me if I have anything left to say before we pursue an alliance the mages; I would say it is already too late to turn back. You have chosen a course of action, you made a commitment. Perhaps the path to your goal is not as easy or straightforward as you thought it would be, but that is not a good enough reason give up. You are doubting yourself, but you must be resolute. We came here to get the mages. So we are going to, one way or another.” 

Thanduwen was practically speechless. She suddenly realized that the reason she had approached Cassandra was because she expected her decision to ally with the mages to be met with newfound resistence; in part, she’d hoped by arguing with Cassandra she’d rediscover her resolve. She had not once considered that Cassandra might be supportive. “Even in spite of what we’ve seen today?” 

“Not in spite of, but because of it,” Cassandra corrected. “Things are happening in Redcliffe that even Leliana did not know about, and that is unusual in and of itself. If a Magister has been occupying Redcliffe since the Conclave, we should have known. The situation is more dire than we realized. That we came to be here, perhaps against what I would have advised… it is almost an act of providence, is it not? Proof that we are on the right path. Tomorrow, Herald, I will follow you back to Redcliffe to meet with this Magister Alexius—for better or for worse.” 

“Why is that so?” Thanduwen was quick to counter. She must have looked so foolish, sitting in the dirt, staring up at Cassandra. She felt like a child, staring up at the Clan’s storyteller, their _hah’ren_ , obstinately protesting one detail or another of his tales. “You did not know me three months ago. You do not know what I am capable of, what mistakes I might make.” It was almost too much to believe. Cassandra had nearly barred Mihris from their camp, had defied her decision to extend their stay in the Hinterlands all those weeks ago, but _now_ , when they were faced with a decision of such gravity, she was simply going to follow Thanduwen’s lead. 

“Do you suppose that all this time traveling together has taught me so little about you?” she asked. “Do you think me a fool, blindly following my faith? We have not known each other for long, it is true; even Varric is less a stranger to me than you. But in the time we have spent together, you have surprised me. You value honor, and compassion, and I see the way that your responsibilities weigh on you. You do not take them lightly.” 

Thanduwen looked away from her, turning back to the fire. It seemed Cassandra knew she was unconvinced. After a moment, she added, “The Seekers were like a family to me, and still, I left them because I felt they were on the wrong path. I would not stand beside you if I did not believe in you.” 

Having made her point—it was not protested—Cassandra returned to her sewing. For a moment, the two women sat in silence. Nearly three months ago, Thanduwen had awoken on receiving end of Cassandra’s wrath; she had been certain that the Seeker would kill her. Now, after what seemed like such a brief time, she had earned the Cassandra’s trust—her respect. 

What in Creation, she wondered, had she done to deserve that?

 

 

 

There was no longer a rift looming before the portcullis of Redcliffe’s walls, but even in its absence, the sight was no less menacing. A rift was simple, a question to which she knew the answer, a problem to which she had the solution. Now, the promise of help from Grand Enchanter Fiona was tenuous, at best; not the least of all because it seemed that she was no longer in a position to pledge her aid. That complication was a bit more difficult to unravel.

They stopped just shy of entering the village yesterday; now, they followed a winding dirt road leading to the shore of Lake Calenhad. To the west, Thanduwen could see a mass of ruins: crumbling towers, decimated homes. She surmised that this was what remained of old Redcliffe, most of the buildings razed during the violence of the Fifth Blight. It was a sobering reminder of the village’s troubled past. Thanduwen prayed that they were not about to contribute further to that history. 

“Let me ask you a question, Seeker,” Varric had ventured, as they past through the gates. “If the village is being run by a _Tevinter Magister_ , what do you think has happened to the Arl?”

Cassandra’s reflective demeanor from the previous evening was gone. In its place was the attitude Thanduwen had come to recognize as her most alert: her mouth set in a grim line, her eyes always scanning their surroundings, her body coiled like a spring, as if it was always prepared to drop into a defensive stance at the slightest hint of a threat. For once, Thanduwen was thankful for it, instead of finding it militant and off-putting. “Arl Teagan is a man of principle,” Cassandra replied. “His leadership was instrumental in defeating the Blight in Ferelden. He would not have left his lands without protest, and yet, I cannot imagine he is still here. As a firm defender of Ferelden, he would not tolerate a Tevinter presence occupying his own lands….” 

But she left the thought to hang in the air. And what splendid air it was, despite the circumstances; a crisp autumn breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. To the east, waterfalls crashed down the faces of the crimson cliffs that gave the village its name. Across the lake, Thanduwen could see the castle towering in the distance.  

Had it not been for the tense atmosphere that hung over the scene like a veil, it might have been beautiful.  

Though there were no visible signs of violence here—no bodies strewn about, as in the rest of the Hinterlands—there was a pervasive anxiety in the air. Refugees and rebel mages hurried about, talking in hushed whispers with one another, the tone of each voice urgent even if Thanduwen could not make out their words. Merchants were still conducting business, and people still congregated in the streets, but there no one seemed happy, or comfortable. It seemed that none of the people in the village felt any safer for being there. 

Lysas had met them once more. He guided them through the streets and the squares, taking them to the tavern that had been cleared for the negotiations. He seemed to take no joy in the task; Thanduwen wondered if it was because he was weary of being an errand boy, whether he harbored feelings of animosity towards the Magister, or whether it was some other matter entirely. He made frivolous conversation with their company. Cassandra dismissed him, but Solas was happy to chat with him, probably needling him for information in his insistent way. But Thanduwen was not listening to them. Soon they passed through a commercial square, and her attention was drawn to the center of it.  

It was dominated by a gigantic statue of a griffon.  

A soft sound escaped her. Lysas was leading the others away, but she could not help but wander away from the group, and closer to the monument. Four braziers stood smoking at each of the statue’s corners, wafting the smell of woody incense around the square. Without hesitation, Thanduwen stood up on top of the marble bench in front of it, and from there, she could just barely reach the griffon’s great talons. Several bronze coins were piled up at the base, collecting between the griffons limbs—offerings, she supposed, from those who had lived long enough to see Redcliffe during the Blight: people who had lived in the ruined buildings to the west, people who knew what living in a constant state of danger was really like.  

She ran her fingers reverently over the coarse surface of the sculpture for a moment, before rummaging in her pack and tenderly placing one bright, golden sovereign between the creature’s feet. As she did so, she whispered a quick Dalish prayer. 

When she stepped off the bench and turned around, she found Varric standing so close to her she gasped in surprise, her hand flying over her shoulder and to the handle of her staff before she had the chance to recognize him. 

He raised an eyebrow. “Leaving tokens of devotion, are you? Funny thing, Herald, I didn’t take you to be the superstitious type.” 

“I’m not,” she protested. “Not usually, anyway. But I….” She hesitated, sighed, cast a brief look over her shoulder at the statue once more before she continued. “I don’t know if he’s a bigger legend in Ferelden or among the Clans. And whether it’s all true or not, the tales they told me about him, I need his strength. A coin seems a small token to part with, if I am audacious enough to ask for such a blessing.” 

“The Hero of Ferelden?” Varric asked, unable to keep the smile off his face. “I’d think he had it easy, compared to you, Herald. Killing darkspawn is simple—you’d be pretty good at it yourself, if push came to shove. Much easier, anyway, than the political nightmare of leading a semi-autonomous, militant, religious organization to close a gaping hole in the sky.” 

“Creators, Varric, don’t say that,” she scolded, bringing her hands to her neck and wrapping her scarf more snugly around it. The last thing they needed thrown into the mix was darkspawn. “Don’t tempt fate.” 

Varric only laughed. “I think it’s too late for that, don’t you? Just look at you. Look at what you’ve accomplished in just a few short months, and where we are, and what’s happening in Redcliffe.” He chuckled again, hoisting Bianca further up his back and turning his gaze to the sky. “If I were Fate, I’d already be plenty tempted. I wouldn’t need the goading of an accomplished storyteller such as myself, no matter how honeyed my words are.” 

She scowled at him, crossing her arms, before turning her gaze back at the griffon. Her mouth puckered, her expression sour. “Do you really think that’s what it is? Fate?” She turned back to him, her eyes narrowed. “You played a part in the rebellion in Kirkwall. Do you think that was fate?” 

“No,” he said, after a sobering moment of reflection. “No, I think choice has a fair amount to do with it, too. Though I’m not really in a position to say whether the choices involved were wise or foolish.” 

“Did you know his Clan was stranded outside of Kirkwall in the years leading up to the rebellion?” she asked, nonchalantly.  

“Did I know about them? One of my best friends was technically one of them.” 

A faint smile crossed her face, but the look on her face was bittersweet. “One of _my_ best…” and here she paused, her eyes falling to the ground, “one of my greatest friends left our Clan with four halla to breed them a new herd. It was a tremendous honor for him, to be called to help the Clan of the Hero of Ferelden. His name was Datishan.”

“Him?” Varric asked, his interest piqued, an eyebrow raised. “Your waxing nostalgic, Herald. Do I detect that this Datishan of yours was something more than a friend?” 

Her face fell in an instant. “If he was, it doesn’t matter now. I haven’t seen him in over ten years.” 

“Ahh, but the heart yearns,” Varric responded, giving her a playful shove. “Why else would you still be thinking of him ten years later?” 

She rolled her eyes, the corners of her mouth tugging upwards in amusement. “It doesn’t, and I’m not. I’m thinking of my Clan. Of his,” she said, nodding in the direction of the statue behind her. “And the consequences they suffer because of us. Do you know why Clan Sabrae was stranded on Sundermount?” 

“Daisy didn’t like to talk about it. But it’s like you said,” Varric replied. “They lost their halla. They couldn’t move their wagons.” 

“Aravels,” Thanduwen corrected. “After the Warden Commander was recruited, rumors about the Clan began to spread, rumors of blood magic and demon worship. People said they could make the forest move, that they would send mighty trees to crush any humans who wandered too close to their camp. Even the Chantry was trying to open an investigation about what sort of practices the Clan maintained.”  

She remembered the day the messenger had come; a hunter from Clan Sabrae, having travelled across the Free Marches on foot, looking for any Dalish that could help them. She remembered the look on Datishan’s face when they’d heard the news. Even now, she couldn’t say whether their parting had hurt him any worse than what had happened to Sabrae’s herd. The way he'd mourned.... 

“Someone crept into their camp. They killed the patrol. They put a sedative in the halla’s trough.” She spoke quietly, her eyes not once wavering from Varric’s. “Their throats were cut and their horns sawed off while the Clan slept, all in the hour or so it took for them to realize the patrol was missing from his post.”  

“Did they ever find out who was responsible?” 

“The Keeper wouldn’t permit it,” she said, grimly. “What would they do, if they found the culprit? They were trapped. If they attacked one of city’s citizens—even for retribution—they would only put themselves in more danger. Without their halla, they couldn't leave. I doubt your Viscount would have cared if they lodged a complaint, and many of them did not wish to. It was designed to look like the herd been slain for their horns, but poachers are almost never that clever. Sabrae's messenger, at least, thought that it was the work of the Chantry: that they’d sent someone to slay the halla so the Clan would be forced to stay near Kirkwall, where the Chantry could keep an eye on them, even if they couldn’t investigate them openly." 

“As soon as Datishan’s new herd was strong enough to pull the aravels, they left. As far as I know, they have not been heard from since, likely retreated so far into the wilderness that even the other Clans do not know where they might be. And I can't blame them.” 

Thanduwen’s gaze shifted to her feet. An uneasy smile surfaced on her features, then dissipated; she bit her bottom lip and tugged at it with her teeth. Clan Sabrae, Clan Virnehn... the world was full of perils, and she was so far from her family. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse, as though it might break at any second. “Thedas can’t make up its mind about whether I’m it’s Herald or worse than Maferath because people say that I am, and nothing that I say or do makes any difference. I worry constantly about what will happen to Clan Lavellan because of the mantles others wish to cloak me in. What dangers might be brought upon them because of me.” 

“Hey,” Varric said, moving closer so that she couldn’t properly stare at her feet without seeing him, too, his face looking up into hers from below. “ _Hey,_ ” he insisted, a bit more adamantly. “That’s not gonna happen to your Clan. All the Hero of Ferelden had was one other Grey Warden and a rag-tag team of misfits. You’re the Herald of the Inquisition. We’ve got an army, and we’re about to get the mages.” He smiled at her in reassurance. “If anyone tries to hurt your Clan we’ll kick their fuckin' asses. Curly will hit ‘em so hard, their descendants will still be feeling it in the next age.” 

Thanduwen exhaled heavily. She brought her hands to her face, her fingers digging into her brow, before dragging them slowly over her features. When she looked at Varric again, her face was calmer, her breathing more steady. “Okay. Alright,” she said, nodding, and turning to go. 

“Just a second,” Varric said, stopping her. He wandered over to the statue, digging in his pockets, before pulling up another shining sovereign. With an ease so practiced it must have been one of his old tavern tricks, he flipped the coin expertly out of his hand and on top of the monument. It landed among the others with a bright jingling sound. 

The gesture had been unnecessary; his words had already done plenty to console her. But it made her feel so grateful it threatened to have her tearing up all over again. 

“Now come on,” he said, jerking his head in the direction the others had headed. “We can’t let Cassandra beat us to the tavern, or she’ll be brawling with the Grand Enchanter before you’ve got two words in edgewise. Having been on the receiving end of Cassandra’s displeasure more than once, I have to tell you, I don’t think it’s going to help the negotiations go any smoother.” 

That got a laugh out of her; having _also_ been on the receiving end of Cassandra’s displeasure, she didn’t need telling twice.

 

 

 

The two of them hurried out of the square at a brisk pace. Luckily, the tavern was not far; Cassandra, Solas, and the Lysas were still outside, waiting for them. The door was flanked with two towering, Ferelden banners. A mabari hound stood above the tavern’s gable, snarling down at all who entered, as if to chase off imperialist Orlesians, or the very taint itself.  

Fitting, she thought; though it had proved, it seemed, little use against Tevinter Magisters. 

Inside, the tavern was dark. The windows, she noted, had been boarded up; by the dust that had settled on the slats, this had been done quite some time ago. It was strange. The hearth crackled, but no bard played, and no tender waited behind the bar; the tavern had been emptied for the negotiations. empty chairs at empty tables. 

Lysas had left them in the tavern by themselves; whatever role he played, then, he was not privy to whatever discussions were about to happen here. But they were not left on their own for long. With the same grace and stealth she had demonstrated in Val Royeaux, Grand Enchanter Fiona appeared, as if materializing from the very shadows and dusty corners of the tavern. 

“Welcome agents of the Inquisition,” she said. “What has brought you to Redcliffe?”

Her expression was perfectly neutral, and there was a faint note of curiosity in her voice. Thanduwen could not tell if it was genuine or put-on, but she did not believe Fiona could really be surprised that the Inquisition had showed up. Certainly, it had taken them a fortnight or so to return to Redcliffe after their initial meeting in Val Royeaux, but she did not think that was cause enough to abandon their promise of talks and partner instead with an aggressive foreign empire. It was hard to tell exactly what she hoped to gain from this deception.  

Thanduwen sorely wished Vivienne was there. 

But she wasn’t. So Thanduwen stepped forward, and bowed her head politely in greeting. “I am here at your invitation, Grand Enchanter. It was you, was it not, who extended such an invitation to us when we met back in Val Royeaux?” 

At that, the Grand Enchanter’s expression fell to confusion, and it was so swift and seamless it appeared genuine. “You must be mistaken,” she said. “I haven’t been to Val Royeaux since before the Conclave.” 

“There is no mistake,”  Thanduwen said, smiling, but her tone suggested her patience was stretched. “While the templars were leaving Val Royeaux, you me in the market and invited me here.” 

“The templars left Val Royeaux?” Fiona asked. “Where did they go? That sounds… why does that sound so strange?” She looked at the floor for a moment, scrutinizing it, as if the answers might be found in the wood grain; then, she shook her head as if shaking off a spell of grogginess, and looked up at Thanduwen with an expression of the utmost seriousness. “Whoever or… whatever brought you here, the situation as changed. The Free Mages have already pledged themselves to the service of the Tevinter Imperium.” 

“An alliance with Tevinter?” Cassandra exclaimed, as if she hadn’t quite believed it until Fiona confirmed it for her. “Do you wish to bring the wrath of all of Thedas upon yourselves?” 

“Andraste’s ass, I can’t think of a single worse thing you could have said,” Varric added. 

Even Solas weighed in. “I understand that you are afraid, but you deserve better than slavery to Tevinter.” 

Fiona looked at each of them in turn, then glanced back at Thanduwen. “As one indentured to a Magister, I no longer have the authority to negotiate with you.” 

“And what of the giant hole in the Veil?” Thanduwen asked, a bit incredulous. “The distortions outside the very village where you have been taking refuge? Do you plan to ignore those threats, now?” 

“We have not forgotten the Breach,” Grand Enchanter Fiona said, straightening her posture. Something defiant in it. “The Free Mages lost some of our most senior ranking Enchanters in the explosion. _I_ lost many dear friends. But we are not strong enough to fight a war on two fronts, and the threat the Templars presented was immediate. Since the Conclave, I can assure you, the mad Templars in the Hinterlands have killed more of our kind than the Breach. We can only concern ourselves with the torn Veil if we survive being hunted by the Templars first.” 

Cassandra looked prepared to retort, but she never got the chance. The backdoor of the Tavern swung open, and all eyes turned to a man that Thanduwen could only presume, by the air of self-importance he exuded, was the Magister everyone was speaking about. She had never met anyone from Tevinter before, and this first impression was not favorable. His dress looked both overly ornamental and impractical. Perhaps it was meant to demonstrate status—she had been told that in Tevinter there was a fairly rigid social hierarchy—but to her, the effect was merely that he looked rather silly. 

“Welcome, my friends,” he said, opening his arms to them, doing his best to appear gregarious. “I apologize for being unable to meet you earlier.”  

Something about the way he said _friends_ made Thanduwen’s skin crawl.  

As the Magister walked towards them, Fiona stepped aside to clear his path in deference. “Agents of the Inquisition, allow me to introduce Magister Gereon Alexius.” 

“The southern mages are under my command,” he added. Thanduwen did not fail to note how they had become the _southern_ mages, instead of the _free_ mages, as Fiona had been calling them. Then the Magister turned his eyes to her, and his look was one not of polite interest, but a predatory kind of fascination. “And you are the survivor from the Conclave. Interesting.” 

She also did not fail to notice how he was one of the first person she’d met not to call her by her forced-upon title, but somehow, this realization was not comforting. “And you are the Magister we’ve been hearing so much about.” 

“All good things, I hope,” he said, flashing her a knowing grin, as if to say that he knew no one would dare speak ill of him, even in his absence. 

“You’re quite a long way from Tevinter.” 

“Indeed I am. Though, I hear you are no Ferelden yourself. And in the company of both a Nevarran and a Free Marcher, if their dress and their accents are any indication.” He shrugged nonchalantly, still grinning as he made his way over to a nearby table. As he sat, his posture was relaxed. “It seems we are all strangers here.” 

“Indeed, we seem quite short of Fereldens,” Cassandra interjected, a sharpness in her voice. “I have not seen any sign of Redcliffe’s Arl, nor his men.” 

“The Arl of Redcliffe left the village,” Alexius replied, stiffly. 

“Arl Teagan did not leaven his lands, even during the Blight,” replied Cassandra. “Why would he leave now?” 

“There were… tensions, growing,” the Magister said, a poor attempt at diplomacy. “I did not want an incident.” 

“So you chased him off his own Arling,” Thanduwen said, before she could stop herself. She had not herself take a seat at the table. “Before he could remove you.” 

“That is one way of looking at it, I suppose,” Alexius said, turning his eyes slowly back to Thanduwen. With a smile, he continued. “Or you might say that the tensions were growing between the Arl and the southern mages. Perhaps, since the opening of the Breach, providing them asylum was proving too challenging a task for him. In which case, I have done both the Arl and the lands of the Orlesian Chantry a great service by entering into an arrangement to remove them from your lands.” He then looked up from the table at another man, younger, who had followed him in. “Felix, would you send for a scribe, please?” 

“Pardon my manners. This is my son, Felix.” Then he looked at Thanduwen, gesturing at the chair opposite him at the table. “Please, sit. Just because we are in the land of the barbarian dog-lords does not mean we need conduct ourselves like them.” 

Thanduwen flashed a glance at Cassandra; in return, she nodded, ever so slightly at the table in front of them. In that moment there was nothing Thanduwen wanted less than to get closer to the Magister. She liked him less and less every time he opened his mouth or turned his eyes to her, his gaze always hungry. All the same, she took a few tentative steps forward, before easing herself into the chair, crossing legs and folding her hands in her lap. 

“Your scouts tell us you have come to negotiate to employ the mages to help seal the Breach,” Alexius said, his attention now undivided and focused exclusively on her. “Is that correct?” 

“It is. We did not expect that they would have entered into another arrangement already—just as Fiona seemed surprised to see us.” 

“Ahh, but I was not surprised to find you here,” Alexius said. “Perhaps Fiona underestimates the Inquisition; I do not intend to make that mistake. After all, containing the Breach is not a feat that many could even attempt. There is no telling how many mages would be needed for such an endeavor. Whatever they are saying about you across the South, you certainly cannot be accused of a lack of ambition.” His lips curled away from his teeth as he fixed his eyes on her. 

“You must not be used to that,” Thanduwen said, through a forced smile, “since where you come from elves aren’t allowed basic freedoms, never mind ambitions. And I can assure you, I have plenty more surprises in store for you. We wouldn’t want your arrival go without the proper greeting it deserves.” 

He looked at her, and he was clearly biting back something cruel; behind his closed lips she could see the bulge of his tongue running over over his teeth thoughtfully. He pursed his lips, then gave a very forced smirk. “I think that you will find—” 

But he did not get the chance to finish his thought. Out of the corner of her eye, THanduwen saw a flash of movement; she stood immediately, sinking into a defensive stance. It was a good thing, too. Alexius’ son, Felix, was lunging towards her; she realized he was not moving to attack her, but falling forward, stumbling. She just barely managed to catch him, holding him upright as he went slack in her arms, grasping her hand to help him keep himself upright. 

“Felix?” Alexius asked, the alarm in his voice plain, standing up from the table and hurrying over to where Thanduwen was propping him up. 

Felix seemed to come out of the spell of faintness then, looking up at Thanduwen. His expression was not nearly embarrassed enough for her liking. Perhaps he was used to his slaves picking him up off his floor back in Tevinter. “I’m so sorry,” he did manage, giving her hand a squeeze. It was audacious—she would have scolded him, but she felt the shape of a foreign object being passed between their hands through the fabric of her glove, something small pressing into her palm. “Please forgive my clumsiness, Lady.” 

Thanduwen was speechless; Alexius was not. “Are you alright?” he fretted, placing his hands on Felix’s shoulders to steady him. 

“I’m fine, father,” Felix said, straightening himself. As he released his hold on Thanduwen, she quickly drew her arms to her side, palm curled tightly around whatever it was he had pressed into it. 

“Come. I’ll get your powders,” he said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to support him and turning back towards the exit. “Please excuse me, my friends. We will have to continue this another time. Fiona, come; I will require your assistance back at the Castle.” 

“I don’t mean to trouble anyone,” Felix said, feebly, before being led off by his father.  

It was a blatant show of weakness. Clearly, whatever nefarious intentions the Magister had for the ‘southern’ mages, he was very protective of his son. It was exactly the sort of thing that one would be inclined _not_ to reveal to someone with whom you were about to enter negotiations. Before, she had assumed Alexius’ smug attitude and conceit had been put on for their benefit, to put them in their place. Now she was not so sure. If he couldn’t do a better job of hiding his concern, she doubted he’d be able to behave with such bravado unless he had a reason to feel very comfortable. What was he so confident about? What did he know that they didn’t, that made him so unthreatened by them? 

Alexius cast one last look over his shoulder, before he shepherded his son out the door. “I shall send word to the Inquisition. We shall conclude this business at a later date.” 

And then, the door was shut behind him; the four of them were left once more in the empty tavern, with only the crackling hearth and the dusty corners.  

Cassandra was the first to speak. “He has some nerve. Not only has he removed the Arl from his lands, but he is occupying his castle.” But Thanduwen wasn’t paying much attention. Instead she raised her hand and opened her fist. There, crumpled tightly, was a tiny scrap of parchment. Delicately, so as not to tear it, she unfolded it; on its center, two sentences, scrawled hastily, ink smeared. 

“Come to the Chantry,” she read aloud. “You are in danger.” 

All eyes turned to her. Varric strode closer, taking an exploratory peak at the note in her palm. “Very mysterious,” he said, in a tone of voice that made it sound like just his kind of excitement. 

Cassandra walked closer herself, taking the paper from Thanduwen and examining it in the Tavern’s dim light. “It could be a trap,” she said, matter-of-factly. 

But Thanduwen was looking at the back door, through which both Alexius and Felix had exited. “I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ll be careful. But we need to figure out what’s happening and this may be our best chance.” Then she turned back to Cassandra, a cheeky grin on her face. “In any case, I’ve never met a Seeker who was afraid to go search a provincial Chantry.” 

Cassandra scowled. “You’d never met a Seeker at all before me,” she said, handing the note back to Thanduwen. Nevertheless, she did not protest further. 

 

 

 

It would have been suspicious, she thought, to head immediately to the Chantry. Herald of Andraste or none, she did not think she could pass for the religious type. So for a time after exiting the tavern, they idled. 

She was tempted to return to the griffon statue, to sit beneath it in silent, dark contemplation of her fate, but instead, upon exiting the tavern, they turned northwards. She was more than happy to let Cassandra guide them, distracted as she was by what had transpired between her and the Magister. 

They wandered down to the docks, along the lakeshore, then back through the streets near the tavern, past merchant’s carts and stone arches. Cassandra’s body language was deceptively casual, but it did not take Thanduwen long to notice the concentration on her face, the way her eyes were taking in every detail of their surroundings. It was then Thanduwen realized that she was strategizing, familiarizing herself with the landscape of the village, preparing for the horrifying (and, admittedly, not entirely unlikely) possibility that the visit to the Chantry, or their conversations with Alexius, ended in pursuit and violence. The thought unsettled her, but she was thankful Cassandra was there to lookout for them. 

Varric occasionally stopped them to strike up conversation with one of the merchants. Solas, for his part, had gone just as silent and contemplative as Cassandra. She supposed he was, in his own unfathomable way, observing the strength of the Veil at different points in the village. His expression did not look grim, exactly, but for all she knew, that could mean very little. He had in the past been so fascinated with the phenomenon of the rifts and the Veil that he spoke about it with the tone of a scholar, not with the alarm one might expect when talking about how the very fabric of reality was literally unravelling around them like a sweater with a loose thread. 

Thanduwen, too, was silent. She often stared—across the lake at the castle, or up at the red cliffs which towered above them—her hands worrying at the note in her pocket, the one that Felix had planted on her in the tavern. She ran her fingers over it so many times that when she removed her and to push back her hair out of her face, she noticed they had taken on the mineral scent of ink. Her fingertips were stained indigo from rubbing it so fervently. 

Gradually, they made their way towards the Chantry. Thanduwen could see it towering at the top of the hill, just past several ancient, crumbling stone arches. She steeled herself, readying or whatever may come inside. Despite all the thinking, the worrying she had done, she still was not certain whether to expect answers or ambush within its walls. 

The Chantry was modest by Andrastian standards—certainly it was not as grand as the Chantry in Haven, and even that, she had been told, was but a humble house of worship compared to some of the grander cathedrals in Orlais—but still it towered over them. As Thanduwen approached the doors, she was filled with a sense of foreboding ( _and something else, tingling at the periphery of her consciousness, an anticipation, something rising, like joy, like a shout_ ) that only grew ( _swelling_ ) as she placed her hands on the strong oak doors ( _beneath them, like something was humming, like the tickling of grass_ ) and closed her eyes ( _squeezed them tighter_ ) and with a deep breath ( _something ragged_ ) pushed _…._  

Time slowed. But it was not, she knew, the same way it had slowed at the rift outside the village gates. This was different. ( _Deliberate. Conscious. Dwelling within this moment as if she could stay there, as if she could halt the progress of time itself, remaining forever within this Chantry, soaking up the sight of_ ) The man at the center of the nave, silhouetted by the colored light streaming in from the glass windows behind him: the way he moved, each swing of his staff accentuated with a flourish, no mater how brutal the blow it delivered. Even then, it had been so evident: his preoccupation, however trivial, with aesthetics, and beauty. His grace, and his skill. The way the absurd trappings of his coat gleamed in the greenish light of the rift, and the way his cloak billowed about him as he spun and thrust, spellcasting. 

She had not thought so then, in the Chantry, caught up in questions of politics and secret missives, but now— _drawn outside of herself, out of the moment, an observer_ —she found the picture so beautiful. 

“Dorian!” 

And with that shout, the words leaving her mouth, the image of the Chantry was snuffed out like a candle, and her vision grew dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ma melava halani. | You helped me  
> Ma serannas. | My thanks/thank you.  
> Dareth shiral, lethallan. | Go safely on your journey friend  
> Sule tael tasala. | Until we meet again.  
> Sule melan’an. | Until then.  
> Tuelanhn ama na. | Creators protect you.
> 
> Credit to fenxshiral for the translations, for whom I have nothing but respect.


	7. Venir Lathbora Viran

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Elves and fame go poorly together,” she said, finally. “Precedent would suggest that if I do anything of the sort my life expectancy will shrink considerably, and not long after I’m dead the ink will be drying on the order to wipe my deeds from history, or attribute them to someone else entirely. Probably someone with smaller ears.”
> 
> Her tone had been jocular, if bitter. But when she turned back to look at him, he was giving her his most serious stare. Against the grey of the sea and the coast and the rain, his eyes were startlingly blue, and possessed of a kind of fierce gentleness. “You hold the key to our salvation. I do not think that will be your fate.”

“Dorian!”

With that shout, as his name left her mouth, the image of the Chantry was snuffed out like a candle—and her vision grew dark. 

And the darkness was staggering. Before it had swallowed her up, there had been a brief moment of recognition when she was coming back into herself, and the realization that she was not seeing him for the first time but seeing him _again_ , and all the familiarity and warmth and comfort that came with it; then, all of it, suddenly ripped from her at the moment of perception. The loss of it was tremendous and her chest ached with it. She wrapped her arms around herself, only to find that her right arm—the one arm that remained—was trapped beneath her, not beside her. An aching in the muscles of her brow and cheeks alerted her to the fact that she was squeezing her eyes firmly closed.

She opened them.

What she noticed first was that her nose was in the dirt. There was grass tickling her cheeks, the blades so close to her face they were a blur before her eyes. The world was hazy, and green, and smelt of damp earth.

The sound of her own breathing filled her ears as she collected herself. She must have hit her head, somehow, because it pounded painfully with each beat of her heart. Even after she’d opened her eyes the aching in her head had not let up—but it was not an aching so much as was a throbbing, something behind her eyes struggling to play catch-up, trying to figure out where she was, to place herself within her surroundings and trace the steps that had brought her here.

With a gasp, she remembered. _Dorian._

Suddenly, all the time she had spent convincing herself not to reach out to him seemed like wasted time. The dreaming had made her desperate for him: to hear the warm lilt of his voice, to watch the curl of his smile, to see the glint of whatever absurdly intricate and beautiful jewelry he was wearing on that particular day. She scrambled into a seated position, her fingers reaching around her for the feel of her pack even as her eyes searched for it. Her hands itched to get to the mirror within—

…hands?

She ceased her scrambling, staring instead at the pair of hands in front of her. Her good arm seemed, well, as good as ever. It was the left one that made her suspicious.

She trained her gaze on her left hand, but it was not long before she had to avert her eyes, shaking her head groggily. Staring at it made her thoughts cloudy. The longer she looked at it, the more the limb seemed to shimmer. She could grasp things with it—as an experiment, she pinched her fingers and plucked a few blades of grass out of the ground—but she still remained unconvinced of how substantial the arm really was. Thinking about it too hard made the throbbing in her head worsen. 

With admittedly less urgency, she returned to the task of looking for her pack, but a quick look around confirmed that it was no where in sight. The question of where her pack had gone, however, was far less compelling than the one that surfaced in her mind next.

Where had _she_ gone?

The trees around her were not unlike the ones that grew in the Emerald Graves, but they were… wrong, somehow. She stood and wandered closer to the nearest of the bunch. As she grew closer, she frowned, before reaching out her right hand—deliberately, not through force of habit—to feel the texture of the bark. The pattern of it was strange, unlike any tree she’d seen before. The bark splintered too regularly, too uniformly, and at unnatural angles. Each bit was straight and square, like shingles, or bricks— bricks building to columns just like those in Redcliffe’s Chantry.

Strange.

Was she in the Fade, still? She must be, what with her matching pair of arms. Although she did not feel the strength of conviction she normally did when trying to ascertain whether or not she was dreaming. How much time, she wondered, had past? Her face was troubled as she flexed her new, ghostly fist, skeptical as she felt the muscles in her upper arm contract and relax with the gesture. It had normally been so easy for her to tell, but now….

Everything looked… brighter. Perhaps that was because of the throbbing in her head. Migraines, she had heard, could have that affect, but she did not think that was it. It was not as if her eyes were straining against the light. Still, the color was somehow more vibrant, the lush green of it all as if she had never before seen something so essentially _green_. The Fade had never felt so… immediate.

Was she trapped here, she wondered? Could she wake if she tried, if she wasn’t already?

Whether she was in the Fade or the waking world, there was no sign of the white wolf; indeed, there was not another soul in sight. But scanning the trees for the creature, her eyes caught on something else in the distance, indiscernible. It gleamed in the strange light of that place, twinkling at her coyly behind a fallen branch.

Slowly, cautiously, she moved towards it. By force of habit she dampened the sound of her footsteps, though she had no reason to believe she was anything but alone. 

The metal continued to sparkle as she approached, a tantalizing lure. She ought to have been more suspicious of it. Instead, she reached, wrapping her hands around the limbs of the fallen branch, still clad in all its emerald leaves, and hoisted it upwards.

_“We don’t have the manpower to take the castle. If you go in there, you’ll die._ ”

The words occurred to her so solidly they overwhelmed her, and she caught only a glimpse of the telltale horns of the Venatori helmet before she loosened her grasp on the branch, dropping it back to the ground. The leaves _wooshed_ as the branch crashed gently to the floor, and Thanduwen brought her hands to her face, closing her eyes and holding her head as the throbbing behind her eyes pounded more insistently.

She had _seen_ him—seen Cullen—the determined look on his face, the scar at his lip twisted in adamant refusal. She could feel the atmosphere of that room in Haven, damp and musky. A smile played about her lips as she remembered him, then. What had his words been? That she had the mark and thus he could order her to do nothing? An amusing line, coming from Cullen, since they’d been butting heads for months. He’d been trying to twist her arm into various actions and policies long before their mission at Redcliffe. 

In the beginning, they had all treated her more like a weapon than a person. If she had any value to them—Cullen, Cassandra—it had far more to do with what she could accomplish than who she was, or what she believed.

She wondered with a self-effacing laugh if that was what it was like for everyone who had ever been held up as prophet. Though she didn’t believe in the Maker, she found herself wondering if that was what it had been like for Andraste, to feel more like an instrument than a being with a will of her own.

With far less mirth: she wondered if that was what it had been like for _him._ If, by the time he cast the Veil over everything like a net, he had already long lost his personhood in the eyes of those he was trying to protect. If, even as he tried to protect them, he had felt so lonesomely _separate_ from them.

She shook the thoughts from her head with a grimace, and considered instead the memory of Cullen. The recollection had been thrust upon her, just like the ones that had before she’d begun dreaming, back in the Graves. Or had she already been dreaming, then? Hard to say. What it did seem to suggest, however ominous, was that the White Wolf, while not in sight, could not be far.

Or at least, she had not yet escaped its power.

She lowered her hands from her face, risking another look around her, despite her persistent sense of disorientation. The forest had shifted, as if the trees had moved while her eyes were turned away. They stood, now, as if at attention, filed in neat rows. Their arms spread over the avenue they’d created like the rounded wooden beams of Ferelden architecture, a grand ceiling. More of them, now, sported that strange pattern of bark.

It was like the entry hall at Redcliffe Castle, or meant to look like it, or _trying_ to, she guessed. She sidestepped around the Venatori helmet, leaving it behind her and following instead the line of the trees. But here, unlike at Redcliffe, her footsteps did not echo eerily across the vast entrance hall; and instead of walking alongside Sera and Solas, she walked alone.

If she had known what was about to happen, she might have reconsidered the company she chose. As it happened, she could not resist her little political gestures, the temptation to twist the knife ever so slightly. She had been so confident in Leliana’s plan: that the Inquisition would storm the castle at just the right moment, pieces falling into place just as they’d designed. It had been too tempting, under that illusion of safety, not to stride into the castle proudly, head held high among with her merry band of elves. When Alexius was forced to surrender she wanted the Tevinter Magister to look up into the faces of people that he only saw as slaves—worse, perhaps, as blood sacrifices—and know he’d lost. How she craved such satisfaction after the trouble he’d caused the Inquisition.

Luckily, Sera had not seemed to realize that this was one of the reasons she had been chosen. Of course, hadn’t kept her from grumbling with Solas the whole way to the castle, despite the seriousness of their endeavor.

The trees led her to a pair of statues. She recognized their somewhat crude, unadorned sculptural style as Ferelden—and despite not being raised to sing the Chant, after all the time in the Inquisition, she could easily recognize the figures as Andraste and Maferath. The Prophet held herself regal, resilient; the Betrayer, as always, held his head in his hands, covering his face in shame, and regret. 

She approached the statue of Maferath, reaching out for him, though she dared not touch him. After all of this time, all of the betrayals she had suffered at the hands of those she had once called friends—a lover, even—she was developing a bit of a soft spot for him. She had been lingering over depictions of the Betrayer like this since they’d defeated Corypheus, looking at him and wondering, mourning… yearning. Luckily, no one had quite caught on. The shock it would have given Mother Giselle to find her staring longingly into the covered face of the Betrayer was not something she wanted to witness, nor did she like the idea of having to endure whatever stern rebuke the Chantry mother would try to deliver after.

But this statue was different, familiar. She soon recognized the pair before her to be the very same statues she’d seen with Dorian when they’d come out on the other side of the portal Alexius had created, knee-deep in the stagnant water of the Redcliffe dungeons.

Things had changed, after that, both for her and for the Inquisition. Somehow, the moment she’d moved backward through time, everything had felt real in a way it never had before, like something was tangibly different, even if it was only herself, or how she felt about the people around her. They were not her Clan—they were not her family—but the whole experience had made her realize how deeply she had come to care for many of them. Perhaps it was the sight of the meager few she’d been able to find in the dungeons, or the deep anxiety of wondering what had become of those she had not found. After they’d jumped back through time and led Alexius away from the castle, she’d hugged Sera so hard it had startled her. 

“Oy, we’re touching. Why are we touching? What’s that for?”

What was she supposed to tell her? That to see her alive, her face flush with vitality, was a relief. Even her consternation was welcome. How much it meant, how good it felt, to see her without the faint halo of red round her, the crimson light of lyirum madness in the pit of her eyes. To hear her voice as it should be, not resonating strangely like she was breaking down, cracking. 

_“The day you died? I ran out of arrows making them pay.”_

Sera’s words. Echoing now, throughout the tree-hall. And how those words had sunk into her, Sera’s loyalty, and the genuine grief in her voice. But instead of telling her any of this, Thanduwen had only squeezed her tighter, before breaking away with an uneasy grin. “I’ll tell you more later. I’m just very glad to see you.”

Solas she could only grin at, the same uneasy grin with which she’d favored Sera, unsure what to do with her limbs, wanting to hug him just as hard. But she was self conscious, afraid she might lean too close, bury her face against the warmth of his neck, wondering what the fabric of his shirt would feel like pressed against her cheek…. She settled, awkwardly, for reaching out and squeezing his elbow, nodding her head at him ambiguously before moving on.

Commander Cullen had treated her differently, after that. After she and Dorian had told the story of moving forward and backwards in time, Cullen had looked at her with more respect, a kind of awed admiration. She did not recognize it, at first—she supposed he was so used to hiding it, especially when leading his soldiers—but there had been a genuine fear in his face as she told her tale. When she had later arrived back in Haven with the mages, he had wanted to coral them, chain them, watch them like prisoners; she had rebuffed him, refused him, but gently. After all, what had happened with Alexius was a perfect example of exactly the kind of magic he had every right to fear. But she would not hold the rest of the mages accountable for the mistakes of the Magister, and she told him as much, although this time, she did so without raising her voice or sneering at him.

Josephine, by contrast, had been thrilled; she said that the tale of her defeating the Magister at Redcliffe was fit for one of Varric’s books. (Cassandra, quite firmly, had told Josephine not to encourage him.)

And then, there was Dorian. To Thanduwen’s surprise, he had decided to stay as part of the Inquisition, even after Alexius had been apprehended; less surprising was the warmth she felt at the notion. It made perfect sense that the thing that had startled her out of the dreaming, the White Wolf’s weaving, had been the sight of his face, her feelings for him strong enough to punch through whatever spell she had been under. He was so dear to her that she couldn’t look upon him without feeling that fondness, the vast history of affection that they shared.

The truth was, she had been far less suspicious of Dorian and his help than she should have been. Of course, if the past was any indicator, she had been far too trusting of everyone. Ironically, perhaps, Dorian—the Magister’s apprentice, the mage from Tevinter—had proved to be the only one of them in whom her trust had not been misplaced. She had loved him immediately for his wit, his charisma, and the bravery he possessed, to have come so far from his home to protect the south from his former mentor. The way he tried hide his goodness behind a facade of vanity. When she had found herself stranded in time with him, she was thankful that it was Dorian who had been pulled through with her.

“ _I’m right behind you,”_ he’d said, and with such warmth and confidence and devotion. She had loved him for that, how quickly he gave her his friendship, his faith. Even Solas she had not loved at once, not the fierce and unquestionable way she had loved Dorian, right from the beginning.

A row of Ferelden chandeliers hung above her as she wandered along the tree-lined path, suspended from the beam-branches and lit ghastly green with veilfire. She heard the telltale pitter-patter of falling water; up ahead, a stream flowed forth from a towering column of water, pouring forth from an impossible height like the leaks in the dungeons, as if cascading from the very sky. But what a sky it was, green and churning, with pieces of the castle hanging in it, suspended and spinning gently like wind chimes in a faint breeze. She remembered Lysas, trapped, repeating the same line from the Chant of Light over and over and over again, and Fiona’s willful insistence, the determination with which she said, “ _You must try.”_

_“You… are a mistake! You should never have existed.”_

The woods had become more dense. Moving through and between each clearing was like moving through rooms, each echoing with the voices of her past. And every new voice was like the beat of a drum, and a strange pulse shuddered through her phantom arm with each of their words. She crossed over the gated metal of the drawbridge identical to the ones they’d seen the dungeon, following the path of the stream; further along its banks, she saw the rowboats and the nets they’d passed at the docks beneath the castle. Along her path was strewn tattered, threadbare Ferelden banners. Tevinter banners, in far more vibrant color, hung from the ribbed pattern of branches above her.

And then, the space before her opened up. She was in a circular clearing like a theatre, ringed by closely crowded trees, thickets. The ground gently sloped down into its center where stood, once more, another statue of Maferath. This one was taller than the first; he stood on a pedestal at least as tall as she was. The ground around the statue was damp and red, runes of blood magic carved deep in the dirt around it and still glistening. Her stomach turned, remembering the sight of Leliana drawing her knife across Felix’s throat, the way the blood had splattered and poured down his front, and the feeble choked sound he’d made before he’d toppled to the floor.

_“No one is innocent.”_

She took a few steps forward, reaching out her fingers, running them over the marble base of the statue. Leliana’s words had startled her, then, her voice thick with venom as Felix went slack in her arms; now, Thanduwen couldn’t help but think she was right. Perhaps that was the greatest measure of how she’d changed over the years: now, after everything that had happened, those words finally made sense. She no longer believed in _innocence,_ not the way she used to. She certainly wasn’t. So much blood on her hands all the water in the Waking Sea wouldn’t wash it off. She remember what she had told Cullen, all those years ago, back in Kingsway, in the golden glow of a dying summer—not that it had made a difference in the mountains, the snow falling softly around them as they looked across the lake…..

_“_ _That’s your world, that you want me to save, and I won’t do it. To me, that world does not deserve saving.”_

Nothing had ever been simple—even in the overwhelming nature of her present circumstances, she could not mistake the past for being a simpler time, or even more idyllic—but it had been easier, then, to know herself. To tell the difference between what was right, and wrong, her moral convictions unshakable. Now, she wasn’t so sure. If she hadn’t been saving Cullen’s world, whose world had she been saving? Some fiction she’d believed in so fervently in those early days: that she could save the world and change it at the same time, make it better than it was. 

After everything she’d seen, she did not blame Anders for blowing up the Chantry. She did not blame Solas for wanting to destroy the world. She could see so little in it that was innocent enough to be worthy of saving, worthy of redemption, when so much of it was full of sorrow, and pain, with evil always lurking in the shadows, ready to spring.

In the end, she wasn’t sure she’d done more good than harm. Nothing had quite turned out the way she’d expected.

She wanted desperately not to feel this way anymore, giving everything that was left of her over to saving a world that was still so full of sorrow and hurt. Her sense of duty—this responsibility she had never wanted, never asked for—pained her in ways that she could hardly bear. She had spent so much of her time in the Inquisition thinking she would have a life of her own, after. (A life of _their_ own, though that dream had been shattered years ago.) When the Exalted Council began, she had been ready to give it all up: to disband the Inquisition for good, to go back to her Clan and live out what time she had left in peace. But between the Qunari attempting to sow chaos in every city of the South and seeing _him_ again, learning why he’d left, she’d realized that retiring, so to speak, was not really an option. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she walked away from that—after all, all of it, _her fault_ , for not seeing him for what he was. More than anyone else, she should have been able to see through him,

“All that I fought for, all that I betrayed, and what have I wrought?” she asked, repeating Alexius’s words and looking up into Maferath’s face, even as he shielded it from her gaze with his hand. Too much of a burden for him, to even be looked upon in his shame. She supposed, having retreated on her own all the way to the Emerald Graves, she had that in common with him. “ _Ruin and death_.”

Her reverie was broken by the sound of gull cries.

A soft breeze tickled her, blowing her hair about her face. It smelled of pine and salt and the Waking Sea. She turned around; behind her, the trees had thinned, and through gnarled and wind-buffeted trunks she could see the tide crashing upon the rocky shore. Basalt columns lined the coast, towering in the distance like the buildings of some ancient and foreign city. A fine mist of rain graced her face.

She closed her eyes, breathed the smell in deeply; her fingertips slipped off the rough marble of Maferath’s pedestal as she took a step closer to the sea.

Of all the places she had been, all the exotic landscapes to which the Inquisition had led her, the Storm Coast had been her favorite. No doubt this was in part because the place was not saturated with the same kind of history and sorrow as many of the others: it had not seen the massacre of her people, the way certain places in the Dales had. 

(The Emerald Graves had been so beautiful. She couldn’t really put to words what it felt like, to be in the Dales: mixed feelings of beauty, and loss, and _rage_. For scattered among the trees, built among the resting places of her people and won by spilt elvish blood, Orlesian chateaus– _summer homes,_ if she understood correctly, places where they did not even live out the full year—had been built among the paths her people once walked. How many altars and graves had been razed to build these homes? Her people had been chased from their land hundreds of years ago so that rich Orlesians could build palaces they only visited seldomly. No matter how the beauty of that place touched her, she never forgot that anger.)

But she had also loved the Storm Coast because there, for a time, she had allowed herself to be happy.

Almost no one dared speak it, but after Redcliffe, many of them hoped it would not be long until the Breach was closed. It was almost too much to believe, too good to be true, that after all the traveling, their journey might soon be at an end. If she was lucky, she might be able to return to the Free Marches before the year’s end.

(Flush with her recent victory, she had allowed herself, for now, to willfully ignore Solas’s warnings about the artifact that may have caused the Breach in the first place, or the so-called Elder One who wielded it.)

Still, Redcliffe was far from the Frostbacks, and it would take the mages some time to make the journey. There were not nearly enough mounts to spare for all of them; they would have to travel on foot, and what with all the preparations that needed to be made for their passage—never mind arranging for the Inquisition soldiers to protect them along the way—it would be quite some time before they arrived in Haven.

In light of that, Thanduwen and several of the others had taken the opportunity to head north, to the coast. Leliana had not been able to get anymore information out of Warden Blackwall than Thanduwen herself had, but now, there was word from her scouts that a small group of Grey Wardens had been spotted searching the Coast. For what, they could not say, but it was enough of a lead to get Thanduwen moving.

She had left Redcliffe with Solas and Sera, and made the week’s journey north, to the Storm Coast. As soon as they had cut through the hills, Thanduwen’s heart swelled. The sight of the Waking Sea stretched in front of her comforted her in a way she had not been since she’d parted with Mihris. 

If it had not been for the basalt columns, she might have thought she was back home. 

It was rare, but on occasion her clan had camped their aravels not far from the shore of the Amaranthine Ocean. They had never stayed directly on the beach, of course; it was far too dangerous, Keeper Deshanna had said, to camp in the open, so unprotected. But they had stayed close enough that, at night, she and her brother had been able to sneak past the adults on watch and run, giddy with laughter, to the shore. 

She knew how dangerous it was, now (she understood the sheer _panic_ it created in the Clan’s elders when they went missing like that) but at that tender age, she and her brother had been so eager to visit the coast at night, to see the stars stretching overhead unobstructed by the boughs of trees, and the moon reflecting hazily on the roaring sea. Often they would fall asleep in the sand, counting stars, tracing their own constellations in the sky—only to be retrieved early the following morning by a harried Clan elder. 

In retrospect, it was astounding they always got off with no more than a polite scolding; then again, they had the advantage of growing up as everyone’s darlings, after their parents had passed. More often than not, no one had the heart to be too firm with them.

She hummed, reflective. She had not thought of her parents for some time. 

(She did not allow herself to wonder whether or not they’d be proud of her, now.)

But they’d been so present in her thoughts at the Storm Coast, the first time she’d arrived there. As if on cue, summoned by thought alone, she could hear her mother’s voice, singing an old Dalish song—her favorite.

But the voice was not _within_ her, as it had been with the others—with Cullen’s voice, with Alexius’. The sound was distinctly directional, coming from a fixed point. She wandered past the circle of blood runes and through the trees, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound over the crashing of the sea. Beneath her steps grass yielded to sand; she sunk into it with each bare foot-fall, feeling the coarse grains between her toes, damp with the rain.

She looked down the coastline, in the direction of the sound, but saw no one through the mist of sea spray and rain. When she turned, however, there was a figure in the distance. Her breath hitched at the sight, and she could not help the shout that escaped her.

“Mamae!”

She did not know what new trick of the Fade this was. She had heard of demons taking on the forms of lost loved ones to ensnare the living, but despite that, she could hardly restrain herself from rushing towards her mother. The danger meant little to her. She hadn’t seen her mother in over twenty years. Demon or none, she would take her chances just for a glimpse of her, to see the way a smile would transform her face, the _warmth_ of it, immeasurable. The way it had always made her feel safe, and forgiven, and loved.

She padded down the beach, stumbling a little over the rocks, torn between eagerness and caution. As she approached, her mother’s voice grew louder. She was walking down the coast, one of her daggers held with confidence and ease at her side as she scanned the shallows and tidal pools, foraging as her familiar voice sang of yearning for things long lost, _dur da’adahl bana’thai…_

She wanted to run to her, to throw herself into her mother’s arms and weep, to recount each of her failures through shaking sobs as her mother’s nimble hands scratched lightly along her scalp, running through her hair with that spine-tingling touch that had always soothed her. All of this seemed possible as she approached the vision of her mother, her pace quickening along the shore. How light-footed her mother had been, how full of life and joy, even during the difficult times, the lean months when food and warmth were scarce. Mother possessed a strength that Thanduwen had never had herself. Of all people, she would have the key, the solution that could unbind her daughter from the cage of her mistakes. 

“Mamae!”

Her mother paused, then slowly began to turn towards the sound of Thanduwen’s voice. But something was not right. 

For a moment, Thanduwen’s mind refused to acknowledge it. So convinced she had been of her vision and so desperate for it to be real that she denied what she could see plainly in front of her. But she could not keep of the charade for long.

Her mother had proudly worn the delicate vallaslin of Mythal, the great protector, but as the figure before Thanduwen turned, she could clearly see the bold markings of June on the woman’s face.

_She was looking at herself_.

Thanduwen staggered backwards, her hands up, palms outward, as if to defend against—what? Herself? She closed her eyes, the pace of her breathing accelerated by the shock.

She felt very foolish. Fantastical as the Fade was, it had not shown her anything that she had not seen before; thought it had, admittedly, jumbled some of the elements. She thought of the statue of Maferath, standing mournful, stewing in his own regret among the oaks, and the blood sigils drawn in the ground around him. 

How had she not recognized herself? The Clan had always remarked upon it, how her and her brother had both shared her mother’s posture, her pride, her dark hair. But if they had resembled one another then—all those years ago, back on the Storm Coast—surely they no longer did. She had become hard in a way her mother never had, for even in the most unforgiving of winters, her mother had always been capable of joy.

It was another wound to add to her collection: how far she had come from what she had been. She hadn’t quite come to terms with it before now. Perhaps that was what had made it so difficult to understand what she was seeing. That figure on the beach— _herself—_ had been walking the coast, feet in the water, without her staff at her back; Thanduwen could hardly remember the last time she had felt safe enough to go anywhere without it. On the beach, her gait had been so relaxed, and she could tell from looking at herself how invulnerable she had felt after her victory at Redcliffe, how naive and secure. Now, her gait was tense, always prepared to drop into a defensive stance and repel an attack, always prepared for it, seeing threats everywhere. Even her hair was different. She had still kept it short then, like her mother. Nothing like the messy, unkempt mop she was sporting these days. 

How young she had been, then. How unburdened—if only comparatively so.

Thanduwen closed her eyes. She moved her lips to shape the words of the song, her chest expanding and collapsing with the melody, _var lath or ha’anor duris o ga dur’manaan—_ and then she found herself within herself, the sea splashing at her ankles as she picked along the coast, eyes sharp on the shallows, knife in hand. And even though she was the one that was singing, the song soothed her, too, with its rhythms and and familiar melodies. _Venir lathbora viran_  sinking back into her recollections, and the person she had been so many years ago.

 

 

 

The rain fell as if in curtains, and as she walked the shallows, she couldn’t tell raindrops from sea spray. Along the shoreline, the boulders were slick with wet, glistening even in the scant light that shone through the storm clouds. The clifftops above were dotted with twisted sea pines, standing like sentinels along the cliff’s peaks. They were beautiful, and resilient, not quite like the evergreens of the Amaranthine Coast, but kindred to them. Yet focused as Thanduwen was on the task at hand, she did not tilt her face up to admire them, as she might have; instead, she fixed her gaze at tidal pools as she sang, her lips moving to the words of her mother’s favorite song.

_“Dan’lathir,_  
_Y var lath’inaan,_  
_Banathel o era’vun i’tel evune,_  
_Den derem i u’lea_  
_O leanash u’vunis o tuast anor,_  
_Aron mi’durgen ghi’len var ara bellanaris  
_ _Varal Arlathan…”_

They had concluded their meeting with the Iron Bull and his Chargers. The mercenaries had been fighting off a group of Venatori when she had approached with Sera and Solas. Their skill in combat was evident; each mercenary moving in tandem with the others with the remarkable coordination and skill. Krem hadn’t been boasting when he’d met Thanduwen at Haven: they really did seem like the best at what they did. 

Despite her reservations about putting a Ben-Hasserath spy on the payroll, she had given her approval for the Chargers to join the Inquisition. Leliana, she was sure, would watch the Iron Bull closely; and in any case, it seemed far better to work with the Qunari, rather than against them, at least for the time being. 

The Chargers were packing up their things, preparing to begin the journey to Haven. The Iron Bull, however, would stay behind, joining the three elves as they searched the Coast, looking for any signs of the Wardens. They could do with a warrior, and it would give Thanduwen an opportunity to get to know him better before he reached Haven. (She hoped that, with that time, she would only become more confident in her decision to trust him.) 

Before he joined them, however, Bull wanted to see his company safely off. So for now, the three of them—Sera, Solas, and herself—had a moment’s peace to do as they pleased. It was a rare luxury, and Thanduwen intended to take advantage of every moment.

Sera had gone off on her own, then. After the week-long journey from the Hinterlands, she’d had more than enough of Solas’ company, so she returned to the Inquisition camp, presumably to trade stories and gossip with Scout Harding. 

Thanduwen and Solas meandered along the Coast. This part of Ferelden reminded her so much of home, the shorelines and the forests she used to navigate with her Clan. She was usually reluctant to talk to Solas about such things—she still remembered how dismissive he’d been of the Dalish when they’d first met—but now, he listened attentively as she described to him visions of the places her Clan would make camp, the different homes the seasons took them too, and how dearly she’d loved each one of them.

Further along the shore, the beach became rocky. At the sight of the boulders scattered in the shallows, and the pools they’d made after the tide had lowered, a playful look had come over her face. “Wait here,” she’d said, the only explanation she’d given, before wandering off into the water. There she had lingered, peering among the boulders and sand and kelp swept in by the tide, singing softly to herself as she did. She felt a mounting joy pressing outward against her ribs as searched, and sang, the melody given up to the salty air around her.

“What are you looking for?”

His voice warmed her; she was smiling before she even turned to him. She looked to where he sat, not three paces away on a piece of great white driftwood. His gaze was fixed on her, trying to figure out what it was that she was doing. For him to be puzzled, for once—for him to be looking to her for answers—pleased her tremendously. 

“You’ll see,” she said, merrily, before returning to her song. _Dur da’adahl bana’thai,_ and all the memories that came with it. 

( _She and her brother with faces upturned to their smiling mother, teaching them the words and stroking their faces as they repeated them back to her_.)

She could feel Solas’ eyes on her. A glance in his direction confirmed he was still looking at her with a strange and puzzled expression, an inquiry on his lips that he was too polite to pose. He seemed unwilling to interrupt her a second time, but she could see plainly that there was question perched on the tip of his tongue. But he only dared ask it once she had ceased to sing, after the had song concluded with one long and tremulous note.

“What were you singing?” Solas called out to her.

She turned back to her searching, diverting her gaze. “It’s an old Dalish song,” she said, wading over to a promising looking boulder. “I am told the city elves also sing it, though they do so in Common.”

“It is very beautiful,” he replied. “And very sad.”

She had placed her hands on the boulder, and was using the support to peer around it, into all its crannies and nooks. “My mother used to sing it to my brother and I when we were small,” she called over the roar of the tide. Then, “ _Aha,_ ” a cry of triumph. 

Solas watched her, plainly curious, as she bent over. Her hands fished for a moment among the rolling waves as she slipped the blade underwater, and her arms flexed as she pried something off the boulder. Then she stood, a triumphant smile on her face, a spiny-looking creature held gently in the open palm of her gloved hand.

She walked back towards him, whipping her damp hair out of her face with a shake of her head. Solas’ expression was skeptical, but she smiled with the confidence of someone with a secret, before turning and dropping herself unceremoniously to the ground beside him, legs splayed. A piece of rock, sea-worn and slick with spray, was embedded in the sand between her knees. She placed her prize on it, holding it gently as she raised her knife.

“What is it?” he asked, leaning forward on his knees to get a better look at it. 

She spared him only a sneaky and conspiratorial glance before she turned back to her task, sliding the knife into the creature’s soft underside and sawing in gentle, circular motions. “It’s a sea urchin,” she replied. The smile playing about her lips was curled up in disbelief. Her tone playful, she asked, “Have you really never seen one of these before? After everywhere you’ve been? All the paths you’ve walked?”

He was still frowning as she completed her cut, popping off a jagged disc of underbelly, before tossing it effortlessly back to the shore. “I confess, well-travelled though I may be, I have not spent much time on Thedas’ coasts.” 

“Then what was the point of all that travel, really?” she teased, flashing him with a grin that was far too charming for the task she was performing; her fingers dipped into the incision on the urchin, emerging a moment later cupping a startling amount of nasty black ooze. Without missing a beat she tossed it down the beach. A splash of water from her canteen cleared whatever remained in the shell. Then, delicately, she reached her fingers inside and removed a slender, orange piece of flesh. She placed it in her open palm and extended it up towards Solas, looking at him expectantly.

“To _eat_?” he asked. While his expression was not quite aghast, it was the closest it had come to it. It was easily one of the most visceral reactions she’d ever seen from him.

“Yes, _to eat,_ you child,” she laughed, unable to suppress the chuckle that bubbled out of her at the intensity of the expression on his face. His features wrinkled in distaste at being called a child; as if to prove he was nothing of the sort, he swiftly plucked the roe out of her palm and, without further inspection, popped it into his mouth.

She watched him; for the first time, as he chewed, her confidence seemed to falter. But his expression was thoughtful as his jaw moved and he swallowed; he turned to her, his expression quizzical.

“It tastes like…” his voice trailed off, searching her face as if the words he was looking for might be found there, “…butter, and beach, and…”

She tilted her head, her nose scrunching in amusement. “Is that a good thing?”

The seriousness of his expression finally broke, the corners of his mouth curling upwards. “I… am not certain,” he said, slowly easing himself off the driftwood to sit on the ground beside her, all the while leaning over to peer between her legs, where the sea urchin sat. “I may be obliged to sample another piece before I am sure.”

She laughed, loud and full, her body rocking a little bit with the force of it. As she settled, her fingers slipped back into the urchin to carefully peel back another finger of flesh, offering it to him. The second piece he took without hesitation.

She could not help but admire the way the muscles of his throat and his jaw contracted as he chewed and swallowed, tendons pulled taut….

Catching herself, she quickly diverted her eyes, turning back to the sea urchin in her lap.

She worked her fingers back into the urchins body, pulled one of the remaining fingers out, popping it into her mouth. The taste reminded her so vividly and instantly of her mother, who had taught her how to forage for the urchins in shallow rock pools, and how to safely open them to reach the edible bits. They shared a special phrase for sea urchin foraging, _gaur ghi’mya—_ treasure hunting. With the taste of the sea urchin filling her mouth, she remembered the joy of all those summers spent up and down the Amaranthine Coast, her mother’s smile and her brother’s laughter, the pride in her father’s eyes on the day her magic manifested….

But no matter the taste, no matter the intensity of her recollections, she remained very far from home.

Her fingers dipped back into the urchin, prying out another section of the roe. “My mother taught me how to do this,” she remarked, casually. Then, on the heels of that thought—she did not want to invite any questions from Solas about her family, not really—she added, “Do you think, after the Breach is sealed, Cassandra and the others will let me go home?”

“You would depart from my company so soon?” he asked, feigning a wounded tone of voice.

“Of course not, you would come with me,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

She looked up at him as she slipped the newly acquired roe between her lips; he was looking at her with one of _those_ looks again. His expression impenetrable, his gaze piercing. Measuring her.

“With your cleverness and strength,” he began, “I doubt that they could do anything to stop you from leaving, if that is what you wished to do. Though I suspect they would attempt blackmail, or espionage, or kidnapping—or all of the above—to prevent you from getting too far. But we have not yet located the orb; nor, I suspect, begun to fully understand the complexity of the threat we face. This Elder One—the one the Magister spoke of, the one you very barely managed to escape from alive in the future you saw at Redcliffe—he will remain after the Breach is sealed. And he is likely to be most unhappy that you have thwarted him.”

It occurred to her how neatly (and quite likely deliberately) he had glossed right over the subject of returning with her to the Free Marches. But then, at the mention of the Elder One… her mind did not drift so much as it was wrenched violently back to her memories of Redcliffe. She could hear the shriek of the terror demon as it dragged Solas' limp and lifeless body through the throne room like a doll. He’d given his life so that she might have a chance to set things right. That he was alive now, beside her, did not completely erase the pain of having seen him dead.

But she put the thoughts from her head with a shake, and favored Solas with an unconvincing smile.

“Whatever he is, this Elder One, he left a strong enough impression on you and Sera that by the time I had rescued you in that future, you were getting along splendidly.”

“If that is the case, then we have every reason to suspect he will prove a very grave threat indeed,” Solas responded with a smirk, an eyebrow arched, his tone amused. 

But she did not laugh; she could not even muster the enthusiasm maintain her smile. Solas’ sly grin slipped off his face, and both his tone and his expression were serious when he spoke.

“Da’len, I understand this… this homesickness you feel. The intensity and the pain of it is more familiar to me than you could know. But if you leave before this is through, the aftereffects of that decision may persist long after the Breach is sealed. I fear that, by the time you return to the Free Marches, there may not be a home for you to return to. And if there is, it will be irrevocably changed, and not for the better.”

She looked away from him, turned her eyes back to the urchin. One edible piece remained within its spiny shell. She inserted her fingers, half-heartedly prying it out of the shell. “I cannot help but feel… my place is with them. I should be _with them._ Not serving as some Herald, or Chantry figurehead. They need my protection just as badly as anyone else. Maybe more.”

“Then do this _for them_ ,” Solas rebutted, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see how earnestly he was looking at her, a passionate insistence in his voice. “Be an example to your People. Show the Dalish that isolation is not the only way to honor your Gods. And prove to the peoples of Thedas that the Dalish are not to be feared. Become a figure worthy of their respect and use the power that has been thrust upon you—unasked for though it may be and despite your reluctance—to not only save them but show them a better path.”

She laughed, bitterly. In her mind she could see the statue of the Hero of Ferelden in Redcliffe Village, and her thoughts turned to the vanished Clan Sabrae. Simultaneously, she could hear Mother Giselle’s voice, describing Shartan and everything the Chantry had done to make him less than a footnote in history. Keeper Deshanna recounting the slaughter of their people in the Dales during the Exalted March.

“Elves and fame go poorly together,” she said, finally. “Precedent would suggest that if I do anything of the sort my life expectancy will shrink considerably, and not long after I’m dead the ink will be drying on the order to wipe my deeds from history, or attribute them to someone else entirely. Probably someone with smaller ears.”

Her tone had been jocular, if bitter. But when she turned back to look at him, he was giving her his most serious stare. Against the grey of the sea and the coast and the rain, his eyes were startlingly blue, and possessed of a kind of fierce gentleness. “You hold the key to our salvation. I do not think that will be your fate.”

It was too much, looking at him like this, with his full attention on her and his face so undeniably beautiful, even as stern as it was. She turned away, worrying her lip between her teeth, but that did not stop him.

“I am not of your clan, da’len,” he said, quietly. “I am not your family—I know this. But if it brings you any comfort, I will be with you, to see this thing through until the end.” 

She tried not to betray how much the words meant to her—no matter how many times he repeated the promise, it always moved her—though by the way she sucked in her breath, looking determinedly away from him, she suspected that she had not succeeded.

Failing to have reassured her, Solas adopted a different strategy. After a pause he spoke again, and now, his tone was playful. “In any case, if you left, I would be the only elven apostate to remain within the Inquisition. You would not abandon me, I think, to such a lonely fate. You’ve a promise to keep, after all, _accomplice_.” Then, after a brief pause, “Do you think we can find more of these?”

Thanduwen turned to face him once more. He was closer than he had been, and he was pointing at the the empty, meatless shell of the urchin between her legs. She gave a breathy laugh, thankful for the change of conversation, and for the distraction it provided.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Perhaps, if I have help. I could teach you.” She was grateful for how well they had come to know one another, the ease with which they could slip in and out of seriousness, into their comfortable banter—she hazarded a grin. “What would you give me in return for this Dalish foraging secret?”

He returned her grin. “What would you ask of me?”

She stood, tucking her knife safely back into its sheath. Grinning down at him, “If you tell me more stories of your journeys in the Fade while we search, I might consider it a fair bargain.”

It was his turn to laugh, now. Through the chuckling, he raised himself so he was standing beside her, looking down into her face with a genuine sense of mirth. 

“Da’len,” he said, a warning in his voice. “Sooner or later, if you keep pressing me like this, I will run out of stories to tell.”

“Then we will have to make some of our own,” she countered quickly. “You can teach me, can’t you? To dream like you do? You could introduce me to all of your friends. That would be far better, I imagine, then just hearing about them.”

His mirth vanished in an instant; his expression grew strange, distant and indecisive. The swiftness and intensity of the transformation had her recoiling, embarrassed—she had clearly been too bold.

“But perhaps it is something that cannot be taught,” she said with a forced laugh, taking a few steps away from him and in the direction of the shore, as if to conclude the matter before he could comment. 

“No, I… forgive me,” he said, the contrition writ across his face as he stepped towards her. “It is still… strange, for me, to talk this way with someone. To have my recollections met with enthusiasm, instead of derision.”

A pang of empathetic pain rushed through her. “The Keepers would say your skills are impossible,” she said, quietly. When she looked up into his face, she realized how close they’d come to one another; the distance between them was almost intimate, and shrinking. “They say no one has been born in more than two ages who can do what you do—not, anyway, without quite a bit of lyirum. But I believe you. You possess such a gift, and I just…” she paused, searching his face. “You’re so keen to share what you’ve learned. I thought, if it was possible, we might share that, too.”

For a moment, he just looked at her, his expression softening. She could not help but wonder if he was swallowing another bitter comment about the Dalish. But when he spoke, his voice was soft.

“It is not an ability one is simply born with, as your Keepers suggest. A natural inclination can help tremendously, though many are not so predisposed. Perhaps, with the state of things being what they are…” his voice trailed off and his gaze turned up and westward. She followed it, her torso twisting as she looked out pas the cliffs. The coast was overcast, and the curtains of fine rain prevented the both of them from seeing very far, but she knew from habit (how much time had she spent looking in that direction herself?) that he was looking in the direction of the Breach. She turned back to him.

He looked at her, his expression kind but otherwise unreadable. “I will consider it.”

Her face split into a beaming grin. “Good,” she said, and reached for his hand. “Thank you. For considering it.” His palm was slick with the rain, but warm to the touch; she realized that, though he had held hers several times, she had never looped her fingers around his. Her smile faltered, softened; she looked up into his face. He seemed startled by the sudden contact. His eyes had widened, his eyebrows raised, his lips parted. But he had not flinched, nor did he try, even now, to pull away from her. Her eyes fell his mouth, the curve of his lips….

But she forced herself to look up into his eyes again, giving his hand a firm squeeze. “Come on,” she said, taking a few steps towards the shore, dragging him with her. “We’ve got more urchins to find before the tide comes in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Dur da’adahl bana’thai. | Under the blackberry vine. Literally, “Under the little tree of black fruit."
> 
> Var lath or ha’anor duris ga dur’manaan. | Our love for this ancient land is deeper than the deepest sea.
> 
> Venir lathbora viran. | We walk the past of lost loves.
> 
> haur ghi’mya | “treasure hutning,” literal translation would be “gold hunting”
> 
> Dan’lathir / Y var lath’inaan / Banathel o era’vun i’tel evune / Den derem i u’lea / O leanash u’vunis o tuast anor / Aron mi’durgen ghi’len var ara bellanaris / Varal Arlathan  
> Trans. We weep. Our hearts—darker than a night without a moon—have been touched but the light of the infinite, glorious stars of this new land, like diamonds, which guide us on our eternal journey, leaving Arlathan.
> 
> All my thanks and credit to fenxshiral for their work on Project Elvhen, which have made my dreams of writing Tolkien-esque songs for the Dalish a reality.


	8. Fen'Harel Ma Ghilana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanduwen returns to Haven with the mages, and the Inquisition prepares to attempt to close the Breach.

On the sixth of Firstfall, less than two days after the arrival of the Free Mages of the South, Thanduwen returned to Haven. But her first act upon setting foot in Haven—before saying hello to anyone or attending to any official business, before allowing Cassandra or Cullen to speak a word to her—was to rush over to Threnn.

It was becoming a habit. Beginning with her first journey to the Hinterlands many months ago, she had always returned to the village with almost baited breath, hope fluttering in her chest like a fragile bird as she made her way over to the Quartermaster. But in all those months, the only thing Threnn had to offer her was a shake of her head. _Nothing._ As the seasons marched past, Threnn had admittedly become more sympathetic, but she had also become less patient. “You will be the first to know if there is so much as a peep,” she said, each time she had to turn Thanduwen away.

But on that particular occasion in Firstfall, with Haven filled with the sound of the bells of the Chantry (tolling to signal the Herald’s return) Thanduwen had rushed to Therein to find her beaming, her smile at once excited and congratulatory (and tinged with some small measure of relief, perhaps, that their shared waiting was at an end.)

Thanduwen’s heart jumped into her throat, her mouth grew dry and her mind went blank. After all this time, no matter how desperately she had hoped, she could not fully comprehend that those hopes had finally come to fruition. “Really?” was all she could manage, her voice hurried and breathy. Without realizing she’d done it, she found herself clasping her hands over her heart, gripping tightly at the buttons of her leather armor.

“Really,” Therin replied. “Word came in two days ago, though at that point I was told you were already on the path back, so I refrained from sending the message by raven. Given how long you’ve been waiting for it, didn’t want to risk—”

“Can I…?” Thanduwen asked, and Therin obliged, forgiving her for her impatience as she knelt at the chest beside her tent. It was full of all sorts of odds and ends: replacement straps for armor, leathers and ores scavenged from the countryside, kits for cobbling together all sorts of useful things: standards, traps, healing and research kits. From beneath a scrap of tanned leather she pulled a small parcel, wrapped in brown linen. It was tied with blue thread, and the knotting and weaving was the unmistakable handiwork of one of Clan Lavellan’s weavers.

She practically choked on the gasp it wrenched from her, her arm gently uncoiling form her chest and reaching out for the parcel.

“I hear they were a fair challenge for the Spymaster’s people to find,” Therein commented, handing the parcel over, “and that’s saying something, considering.” Thanduwen hardly even heard her. She took the parcel into her hands gingerly, her fingertips running over the thin cloth of the packaging, and tracing the fine blue line of the twine.

After an awkward pause, she looked up at Threnn. “Ahh,” she began, a trembling in her voice. “Do you mind if I…?”

“Yes, yes,” Threnn said, a grin on her face, practically shooing her off with a wave of her hand. “You’re very welcome, now be off with you. I’ve got plenty to do without you hovering on my doorstep.”

She spared Threnn the most grateful look she could muster, then rushed off. Past Varric, past Iron Bull, past Cassandra and Cullen (both calling to her in vain) and into the wilds outside of the settlement. Since her first day in Haven, when she’d gone off exploring (avoiding Solas, a concept which would have been laughable to her now if it had occurred to her) she had found a particular copse of evergreens, clustered around a very comfortable, climbable boulder. It had become a refuge for her, a sanctuary: she would sit among the firs and watch their needles rustle with each tickling breeze that passed through the mountains, a dance of many parts.

At the boulder’s face she tucked the parcel delicately between her jaws, then she scrambled ably up the side of it and onto its flat top. At its modest summit, she cleared a small space of the light blanket of snow that had settled there. Then she sat straight down onto the cold damp rock, legs crossed, the package nestled in her lap. 

Her hands hovered for a moment, hesitant, as if, now that she had the thing, she was not quite sure what to do with it. Slowly, very delicately, her fingers came forward to work at the knot which held the parcel together. A breathy chuckle escaped her—she could tell from the knot alone that the Keeper’s second, Ithras, had tied it. He was several years her junior, and by the time she had left for the Conclave, he had still failed to outgrow the last of his bitterness: that Thanduwen had become the Clan’s first before he was old enough to challenge her claim to the position. Still, they had been supportive of one another, and even if their relationship had been antagonistic at times, they had spent many long hours studying ancient lore in each other’s company, making observations and notes. 

She smiled at the memory of him following her around their camp, always eager to correct her if (Creators forbid!) she made a suggestion that was even the slightest bit unorthodox. Ithras always played by the book, if only to draw a contrast between the two of them, trying to paint Thanduwen as over-eager to reinterpret and reexamine traditions that had gone unchallenged for centuries. It was not entirely unfair of him. She had been known to challenge interpretations of ancient parables and fables and songs with her own, but in a manner that was, perhaps, more respectful than Ithras would have let on.

Carefully, she removed the thread from the parcel and held it, cupped in her hands. Even something so simple as this tiny piece of blue twine was enough to stir a staggering wave of emotion in her. She brought her cupped hands up to her face and whispered a blessing for Ithras against it; then, with great care, she wrapped the string around her wrist and tied it neatly.

She would wear it until it snapped. And she had enough faith in her clan’s weavers—Ghedril and Sulien—to believe that would be a long time coming. With the thread fastened firmly, she returned her attention to the parcel before her. Gently, she pried the linen packaging back, a soft “ _oh_ ” of longing slipping past her lips as her eyes met its contents.

They’d sent her bits of everything. Tiny, tied bundles of herbs: elfroot, blood lotus, and the scraggily _virelana_ that grew tall in the spring; seedpods and giant acorns; dried leaves of the willow tree, pale gold and thin, from banks of the river where their aravels rested in summer; a tiny bottle of the river water that had sang them to sleep at night as bubbled and laughed along the banks. (They shouldn’t have spared something so precious as glass, she thought, but still held the tiny bottle up to the light, watching the way the winter sun scattered through it.) There was a tiny, crude carving that one of the children had sent for her (to protect her, a badly scribbled note insisted) among a half dozen other such trinkets: water-worn pebbles, purple shells, and other such treasures. But what filled her to the brim with longing was the notes she found beneath all the gifts.

She recognized the penmanship of Keeper Deshanna on first, so she opened that one first, sticking a dried flower behind her ear as she did so. She spoke plainly, but even so, the words had her beaming and laughing as she discussed the recent forage and the introduction to the Inquisition scouts, who had finally found the camp after many weeks of searching when they encountered none other than Mihris.

“Oh, Mihris,” Thanduwen whispered fondly, sighing softly to herself as she read Deshanna’s account of the young mage leading the Inquisition to their camp. She was reassured to find that they had accepted Mihris almost immediately as one of their own; there had been, apparently, plenty of work for her to do in Thanduwen’s absence.

There was a note from Ithras, and Mihris himself, and a few dozen others written in various hands. She read each note slowly, savoring them. Many of them were short, Clan mates wishing her luck, wishing her safety, playfully warning her not to get too familiar with the shemlen or forget the old ways. But there was one note that wiped the mirth straight off her face.

She left that note for last. When she had exhausted the pile of scribbled notes on tiny scraps of parchment, she reached for the last with trembling fingers.

_Aneth ara emma lin! Shouldn’t you be home by now?_

She had to set the paper down for a moment. Her breathing had become heavy, and there was a stinging in her eyes that had nothing to do with the cold wind whipping through the Frostbacks. 

_Fen’Harel ma ghilana! We sent you to spy on the shems and I told you, very specifically, to lay low. Now I hear that you have been marked as some kind of prophet and are held aloft as a Herald of the shems’ faith. Truly I cannot think of anything further from what I suggested. Do you behave this way to spite your poor brother? I had been practically tearing my hair out before Mihris led your scouts to us and delivered the news—and you know as well as anyone that my hair is far too magnificent to be treated with such cruelty. When you find me again when this is all over and I riddled with bald patches, know then that it is your doing. This is what you have done to me._

_Though I cannot express in writing what it does to me to hear you are safe. A bone-cracking hug would be sufficient, I think, but alas, that will have to wait._

_I had wanted very much to return to this Haven your scouts spoke of—I am sure, surrounded by Chantry sisters, that you are very much in need of quality company—but Keeper Deshanna would not let me go. That is probably for the best. I’m sure upon arrival it would not be long before I caused a fuss. There are even Templars there, I hear, though I have every confidence you are correcting their wicked ways with the effortless grace you bring to all things. Know that I have arrows for any who get too Templar-y with you. In the meantime I will remain with the Clan and make sure Ithras does not get too big for his britches in your absence (easier said than done, as he as already become all puffed-up at the notion that your absence may be longer than he anticipated.) And, for as long as she does not grow weary of it, I will have Mihris recount (again and again) how she found you in the south, and how brave you have become, and how kind you were. Sul’emas myathash su var linalinen i var lethal._

_Ar lath, emma lin. Dareth shiral. Remember that, Herald or not (and I do not doubt that, to the shems, you are surely a Herald of something—good manners, perhaps? a sense of taste?) the shems will never love you as we do. With every day we are praying that you will find your way back to us._

_May we meet again soon. Tuelanhn ama na sule melan’an.  
_ _Drohan_

It was as if something very solid had found its way into her chest and was pressing outward. She felt so full it ached. As she read the letter, she could hear her brother’s voice in her head, the lilt and cadence of every teasing syllable. The way his face could transform from a mask of seriousness to a mischievous grin in an instant. The way that such a grin would pull and tug at the lines of his vallaslin, his green eyes creasing in mirth through a curtain of his perpetually unkempt hair.

 _Fen’Harel ma ghilana._ The elvish rolling out of his mouth. The language had always come so naturally to him—she had envied and admired how effortlessly he had folded the broken fragments of the language into common speech.

 _Fen’Harel ma ghilana._ She almost had to laugh. She should be so lucky, to have anyone guiding her, even if it was just the so-called trickster god.

He certainly couldn’t be any less helpful than Andraste.

 

When Solas found her later that afternoon, she was kneeling in the snow behind her cabin.

Seggrit had been kind enough to simply give her two of his empty crates when she had asked. They had seen too many journeys, he’d said, and according to him, they weren’t strong enough to serve as anything other than firewood. She had tried to pay him for it, but he’d only laughed at her. Weapons, he’d said, he’d have to charge her for. Armor, he’d have to charge her for. But Andraste herself smite him if he could not spare an empty crate or two for her Herald.

She had carried them to the back of the cabin that the Inquisition had granted her as her own. After peering about, she had found a spot near the corner that, by the direction of the wind or the length of the eaves, was relatively free of snow. It was protected from the weather, and far enough out of sight as not to raise the umbrage of the Chantry sisters and the pilgrims who might have otherwise spotted it. She’d placed one crate on top of the other, with its opening facing outwards. 

Inside the crate, she had placed one of the gifts her clan had sent her: a sizable relief carving of a hammer and an anvil, chiseled in the hands of their Hahren. At its base, on a bed of pine needles, she had arranged little rows of scraps she had collected on her journeys. Tiny shards of blue vitriol, glittering bits of amber summerstone, deep red droplets of drakestone and chips of serpenstone from the coast were all arranged in intricate patterns. Little gifts, offerings of devotion to her patron God, her protector—June, god of Crafts.

As far as shrines went, it was hardly impressive, but it would do.

It was here that Solas found her, knelt in front of the makeshift shrine, palms opened upwards on her knees, eyes closed, mouthing the old prayers and devotionals. She had hardly uttered them in the months she had been in the Inquisition—she had rarely had time or an appropriate place—but once she had begun, the familiar rhythms of the prayers and the shapes of the words in her mouth brought her a tremendous comfort, lessened the burden of her homesickness a little bit that had been brought on by her Clan’s letters. (Drohan’s, she had kept close; she had tucked it into the pocket at the inside of her armor, and it sat now just above her heart.)

Solas seemed to be trying to hide it, but the disapproval and condescension coming from his direction was practically palpable.

She finished the prayer she had been reciting when she’d detected the telltale rhythm of his steps (she had spent enough time with him, now, to recognize them) then slowly opened her eyes to look up at him. He was simply watching her. Truthfully his expression seemed to betray a perverse kind of fascination rather than condemnation, but that was almost worse. As though she were some kind of specimen for study.

She had tried her best to be understanding of his experiences, and he, in turn, had tried to be less immediately dismissive of any mention she made of her people, her culture. But there was no denying that it remained a point of tension in their relationship, no matter how close they grew.

Instead of making excuses, or rushing to explain herself, she simply stared back at him, waiting for him to make the first move. Something pained seemed to flash across his face, briefly, before he averted his eyes, turning them instead to the shrine in front of her.

“May I ask a question of a personal nature?” he asked, and his tone was innocuous, though if anything, that made her more nervous than if his voice had been cutting.

“You may,” she said, slowly, not taking her eyes off him for an instant. Her face was hard, steeling herself for whatever insult, intentional or not, that he was about to deal her. “If you do your very best to be polite about it, you may even get an answer.”

“Why June?”

She hummed in reaction, a deep, contemplative sound. A personal question indeed, but not one that was by its nature volatile. It was not one she had been asked in some time of course—such an intimate question was considered rude between elves who did not know each other very well; perhaps he was aware of that, and thus, the question’s preface—but she had defended her choice to those of her clan on more than one occasion. 

Her brother, Drohan, had received his vallaslin nearly a year before her (despite being several years her senior) and had chosen to be marked with the vallaslin of Falon’Din. It had not come as much of a surprise to anyone, given how deeply he had been affected by the death of their parents in their childhood. He had taken the vallaslin of Falon’Din to honor them. It was a reason the Clan had found easy to understand. While perhaps some had hoped he would choose otherwise—he could sometimes be a bit morbid, and some had hoped he could be dissuaded from this and his often deeply dark sense of humor—no one had really expected him to do so.

Perhaps that was the difference between her brother and herself: while he had more or less met the Clan’s expectations of him, she had defied them. They had expected her to take the vallaslin of Mythal, perhaps, like her mother, or of Elgar’nan, for her natural ability to lead. Even Keeper Deshanna had been surprised when she had proclaimed her choice. She was not, after all, a smith or a craftsman of any kind. But she had been firm in her convictions—the preparations she had made for receiving her vallaslin had made her choice clear.

She must have been ruminating for some time. She was startled to hear Solas’ voice again, breaking through her recollections.

“Have I offended you?”

“No,” she said quickly, looking up at him. “No, and it’s not— it’s not the first time I’ve been asked. June is not a popular object of devotion or veneration, but more often than not that is because so little is known of him. Even by our own standards, our knowledge of June is… paltry.”

“As I understand it,” he commented, his eyes moving back to the altar, “he is revered within the pantheon as a bringer of technology. Of weapons.”

“That’s more or less correct,” Thanduwen responded, turning her own gaze back to the crates in front of her. “Though we refer to him as the God of Craft, a bit more broadly. Still, I…. When I was coming of age, and meditating on the Creators, I got… fixated, absolutely possessed, by this comparatively minor detail of his mythology. Which is that, in some stories, it is said that June created himself. And to me, then, that meant, not that he had created himself in the literal sense, but that identity was always an act of creation. It could be purposeful. It could be decisive. We are always becoming, making our own myths, after all. And to wear his sacred marks was a reminder of the fact that I create myself with every decision I make, every action I take. That I alone am responsible for what I become.” She raised an eyebrow, and her voice took on an ironic tone. “That sentiment seems more appropriate now than ever, what with everyone’s eagerness to hold me accountable to the Maker alone.”

He turned and looked at her curiously for a moment, before taking a few steps closer and seating himself beside her. For a time, he was silent, looking at the makeshift shrine thoughtfully. As he stared at it, she refused to allow herself to feel self-conscious, even as it was clear that it was taking him some considerable effort to keep his face straight—to fight off the sneer or the raised eyebrow that he was often so quick to resort to when they were discussing Dalish customs. But instead, he surprised her.

“I may not worship your Gods, da’len,” he began, “nor condone or participate in the traditions of your people. But I confess, I find the reasoning for your choice to be… moving. If you will forgive me for saying so, it is a far greater testament to your maturity than the marks on your face. It demonstrates a wisdom not usually found in someone so green in years.”

She was looking at him, doing everything in her power to keep her mouth from falling open in shock. His response had been far from gushing, but based on his prior comments, it was practically effusive by comparison, even if she still wasn’t certain if there was an insult to be found somewhere among the praise.

Though it weighed little, she could feel the emotional charge of Drohan’s letter, pressed against her chest. She loved her brother—perhaps more dearly than anyone—but she realized in that instant that Drohan was exactly the kind of headstrong, young Dalish blood who would have laughed at Solas, had he come to Clan Lavellan on one of his travels. And laughing the least of it, she was sure; Drohan surely would have called him pompous, an outsider, sneered and called him a liar, a trouble-maker. He might have even called him flat-ear, as Mihris had done in the Hinterlands, before encouraging him to leave with a bit less verbal witticism and a bit more physical violence.

Drohan would have run Solas out of camp; and, more likely than not, he wouldn’t have been alone.

And yet, here they were, the two of them.

“Thank you,” she said, quietly, turning her eyes back to the shrine. In the ensuing silence, they traded sidelong glances at one another, their eyes never quite catching each other’s. Solas spoke first.

“Are you prepared to become more of your myth, then? We are now ready to close the Breach. What comes next… your legend will only grow, after.”

She laughed at that, leaning back out of her supplicant kneel to sit, bringing her knees up and resting her arms on them. “That, I did not do by myself.”

“Did you not?” he asked, his question honest. “You had help, perhaps—a fact you seem to remain quite fixated on—but it was your deeds alone that brought the mages here. And it is the mark—your mark—that will allow us to finally close the Breach.”

She was quiet then, staring at the carving on the shrine. All of these people, counting on her; not only the members of the Inquisition, but all the people of Thedas whose lives had been upended by the Breach, and the many more whose chaos it had not yet touched but whom it would spread to surely, eventually, if allowed to go unchecked. Slowly, she asked him, “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will work,” he responded, his voice thick with an impossible amount of certainty.

She flashed a look at him, a wonder in her gaze. “You have that much faith in the mages?”

And he turned to her, a small smile playing about his lips like a badly kept secret.

“I have that much faith in _you_ , da’len,” he said. “You should have more confidence in yourself. After all you have accomplished, you deserve at least that much.”

Something inside her twisted, swelled, and she had to tear her eyes away from him to fight it down. The overwhelming combination of at once being so _touched_ by his confidence, and so frightened, so unsure of her ability to deliver on it. How would his tone change, she wondered, if (in spite of his reassurance) she failed?

She sighed. “I suppose I should go tell Cassandra and the others that we are ready.”

“Yes, I suppose you should.” Solas rose nimbly to his feet, and then extended his hand to her, helping her off the ground. She allowed him to pull her upwards. There they stood behind her cabin, hidden from the eyes of others, and in that moment all Thanduwen could do was look at him—still holding his hand—wondering at his confidence and his kindness, all the depths and layers that (despite their months of friendship) she still had not touched. As she stared at him, he began to smile—sly and knowing—and he passed a last glance at her shrine before turning back to her.

“Do not underestimate the strength of your spirit, Herald,” he said, squeezing her hand gently before releasing it. “Someone of lesser conviction and character would have faltered on this path a long time ago.”

Then, with a gentle bow of his head, he retreated, leaving her in front of her shrine with the snow drifting slowly about her.

 

By first light on the following morning, preparations for the journey to the Temple were well underway.

To say that Thanduwen awoke groggy would be in part deceptive: knowing what the morning would bring, she had slept very little throughout the night, and what sleep came was in fitful, short bursts. The sound of the soldiers and the mages beginning their day outside practically came as a relief. 

After a brief detour to the back of the cabin for a hurried prayer before her shrine, she was out and about among the people. The air was thick, and though the settlement was a busy whirl of activity, it was very quiet. Each time the wind kicked up, its faint whistling could be heard over the din of the morning’s preparations.

Even in the early morning, the settlement was full to bursting; the sheer number of people who swelled within its walls was, admittedly, a little staggering. The sum of people who now made their home in the settlement had multiplied exponentially since the mages had arrived. The mages were the most obvious addition. Their numbers had swelled, though, since they had departed from the Hinterlands. Word had spread, it seemed, that the Inquisition was now a refuge from the rebellion and the war, and mages—both loyalists and rebels—had come from across the continent to join the ranks. Some had been escorted by Templars from the ruins of their collapsed Circles. Some, even more miraculously, were refugees who had made the journey through the Frostbacks entirely on their own, looking for a place they could finally be safe. Now, they were preparing (albeit quietly) to make the march to the ruined Temple.

But the mages were only a portion of their new additions, even if they made up a majority. There were quite a few more Chantry clerics and missionaries than had been present before. Thanduwen was told that many of them had been mentored by Mother Giselle, and had followed her here. But there were plenty who had come from other, more remote Chantry districts, moved by the deeds of the Inquisition and compelled, they said, as if by the Maker, to do whatever good they could to support Andraste’s Herald. It seemed that the Chantry’s initial denouncement of the Inquisition, no matter how vitriolic it had been, had done little to dissuade believers from being in the least curious, if not interested in joining themselves.

Significant, too, were the number of soldiers, far greater than it had been five months prior. She could remember the comparatively smaller units that Cullen had been training upon her arrival in Haven. Now the sound of their sparring could be heard even from the doors of the Chantry, and their exercises spanned from the walls of the settlement right up to the frozen lakeshore. Their ranks had grown with the addition of the recruits Corporal Vale had sent, along with a group of villagers from Redcliffe who had been eager to lend their support, following the mages as they travelled along the Imperial Highway towards the mountains.

For all that Thanduwen was uncertain about her, Vivienne had been right—their fledgling movement was growing.

Not everyone would be making the journey to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Cassandra had thought it best to leave the bulk of their forces (with the exception of the mages) behind, in the event that something went wrong. Though she did not say it Thanduwen could tell she was apprehensive about the possibility that any attempt to close the Breach might just make it worse, ripping it open again and sending demons scattered through the Valley just like the day the Temple had been destroyed. Like picking at a scab until it bleeds anew.

Nervous herself, Thanduwen did not disagree with her plan.

Cassandra, Solas, and the Iron Bull would make up her personal guard. They would be accompanied by the mages and, at Cullen’s insistence, a few choice Templar soldiers. 

Thanduwen thought to suggest that a few Templars would be little use against the hundreds of mages should something go wrong—but, on second thought, decided not too. “ _We cannot be certain how you will be affected_ ,” he had said, and for once, there had seemed to be a genuine concern in his voice, instead of just the tactical analysis of what might happen should the Inquisition lose its greatest weapon. If it brought the Commander comfort to send a handful of Templars with them, she would allow him that comfort. In any case, he had allowed her to participate in the selection of which soldiers were sent; she chose the ones that she trusted best, ones whose kindness and good judgement the mages had vouched for themselves.

Dawn crept across the sky as she made her way through Haven’s gates and out to the stables. It had also been decided that, though there were far too few horses for everyone traveling, that several mounts should be brought to the Temple, in the event that the Herald had to make a quick escape. This had been Leliana’s suggestion. As Thanduwen approached the paddocks, she couldn’t help thinking of the prior evening, of Solas’ inexplicable confidence that they would be successful. Judging by the atmosphere, and the precautions they were taking, no one seemed to share his optimism.

“Morning, sweetheart,” Thanduwen said, her voice sleepy, as she walked up to the fences. The blue roan mare who had carried her countless miles, from the Hinterlands to Val Royeaux and back, walked up to greet her. From a pouch at her waist she pulled out an apple, offering it up in her open palm. The horse accepted it, whinnying in gratitude. “Easy day today, we hope,” she mumbled, running her hands along the horses’ neck. The mare was no halla, but she had found herself developing a fondness for her all the same.

She disappeared within the tack tent for a minute, withdrawing a moment later with a blanket and a saddle in her arms. It was not long after that Varric found her, tightening the belt on the saddle and making minor adjustments to the stirrups. He leaned one one of the posts of the paddock, watching her work.

“What are you doing up so early?” she asked. Varric would not be following them back into the Valley; it was probably the first time in months Cassandra would be traveling without him in tow. “It’s hardly a decent time to be up.” 

“And miss all the action? Where’s the fun in that?” he asked.

She turned to him, shooting him a sharp glance. “Pray for as little action as possible today, Varric.”

He chuckled at that. “Success or none, there will be action, Herald. A heroic deed is being attempted. That’s not something that will go quietly into the night.”

She let out something between a grunt and a huff. “I should only be so lucky.”

Varric paused. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him looking at her sympathetically. “Andraste’s ass, you really are nervous, aren’t you? Cassandra, I understand; Curly, well… I don’t think he’s relaxed since sometime in the Towers Age. But you?” He looked at her, and his expression was a cross between something quizzical and scolding. “Chuckles says it will work. Don’t you trust him?”

“Oh, I trust him,” she was quick to shoot back, ducking back into the tackle tent, emerging a moment later with a bridle. “If _he_ was the one with the mark, I probably wouldn’t even bother to go into the Valley myself. I’d sit here with you with a bottle of the finest mead Flissa has, looking up at the sky and waiting for that massive green gash to vanish, ready to pop the cork.”

“But?” Varric asked.

“But it _isn’t_ on him, it’s on me. And to be quite honest, I feel as though I’ve only gotten this far by luck alone. And I’m frankly terrified that my luck is about to run out.”

“I’m all ears, if you’ve got a better idea.”

Her fingers paused where they were buckling the bridle on to her horses’ face, and she turned to face him, her expression and voice equally flat. “No, Varric. I’m perfectly out of ideas.”

He lifted his arms and shrugged, as if to politely say, _Well, you really are shit out of luck, then._ “I’ll tell you what. I’ll ice that mead for you, for when you come back. You know there’s going to be a party, right?”

“Nobody said anything about a party,” she said half-grumbling, turning back to her horse.

Varric laughed. “Of course they didn’t! No one’s planned one. But there will be one, anyway. That’s what happens when people are stressed practically to their breaking point for months on end, and then suddenly the danger vanishes. A release is needed once the pressure’s gone. That’s a well known fact.”

She turned to him, the grim line of her mouth softening into something not quite a smile, but closer to it. “And if, instead of riding back triumphant, you find me galloping back into the mountains with an untold number of demons and Creators-knows-what trailing behind me?”

He crossed his arms, matter-of-factly. “Then I hope you will remember who has your mead, and that you’ll come back to help him onto the back of your horse before we make our timely escape. You can drink and ride at the same time, can’t you?”

“I’ve never tried.”  
  
Varric rapped twice on the paddock with his knuckles, favoring her with a sympathetic grin, as though, by not cantering tipsily around for the past few months, she had been greatly missing out. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

 

They left before mid-morning, though the going was slow. The sun had not yet reached its midpoint in the sky, and the day was unusually clear. The sky stretched bright and blue above them, and not a cloud was to be seen—at least, none beyond the ones the curled and churned around the Breach like some unnatural storm. Under different circumstances, the weather might have made them cheery: it was a rare that a day passed in the mountains without snow, and as yet, there was none, neither falling about them in gentle drifts or rushing about them in a furor of thick flakes. According to Leliana, they’d had a spat of snowstorms in the mountains just preceding Thanduwen’s arrival, which would have made their descent into the valley far less pleasant, and the task at hand more difficult. For the time, at least, their luck seemed to be holding.

Thanduwen, Cassandra, and the Iron Bull were at the front of the procession. Cassandra and Thanduwen led horses. Solas was somewhere behind, engaged in what looked like a highly technical discussion on magical theory with Grand Enchanter Fiona. He was the only one among them who looked relaxed.

The walk to the Temple was vaguely familiar to Thanduwen, even if she had only made it once before. But that day was etched so firmly into her memory that she half-believed she could have made the trip alone, without any guidance, if she had wanted. They passed the same frozen streams and ramshackle huts. But rather than linger on them (how the months had succeeded or failed to change them) Thanduwen found herself looking up at the clear blue sky, but her eyes inevitably following along the familiar paths to the Breach.

“Nice day for it.”

She nearly jumped at the voice, so lost was she in her recollections, but then relaxed. The Iron Bull had found his way to her side. He was surprisingly quiet for his size—she supposed that was a trade skill.

“About as nice as one could hope,” she responded. She tried to make her voice sound chipper. The truth was, despite how up front he had been with her, she hadn’t quite made up her mind yet about whether or not she trusted this Iron Bull, even after the time they’d spent together on the Storm Coast. Then again, the fact that he was still allowed to remain within the Inquisition suggested that Leliana had been satisfied with whatever explanations or answers he had given her, which she supposed should have been enough. Still, the last thing she needed was him writing in his reports how cowardly and skittish she was, another unwitting avatar of a weakening South.

He chuckled at her response. “Weather won’t make much of a difference, I guess, but it’s nice to have the sun.” He turned his head to look at her with his one good eye, careful to keep his horns clear of her horse as he did so. “Are you always this nervous, or is it just me?”

She let out a laugh. That was right. Slim chance of getting much past him, being a spy and all.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, her tone as light as it could be. “I’m nervous about…” her voice trailed off, and she gestured vaguely with her free hand in the direction of the Breach.

“Don’t be,” he said, simply. “It’s not worth your energy, and it’ll make you more likely to slip, make a mistake.”

She turned to him, looking him over. Before Bull, she’d never met a Qunari. Small wonder, really, given her lifestyle, but even so, he was very different from what she might have expected. Though to her, he seemed even less like a mercenary than he seemed like a Qunari, if you didn’t count his massive muscles and his skill with a weapon.

“Thank you,” she said, quietly, “for not feeding me some nonsense about me being Herald of Andraste, and how my success is preordained, your that you believe in me, that sort of thing.”

He chuckled at that. It was a deep, rumbling sound, and his mirth twisted at the scars on his face. “No point in that. Andraste means as little to me as she does to you. Anyway, I don’t know you well enough to know if you’re ready or not. Them, though,” he said, nodding his head back to the mages behind him. The gesture was made all the more dramatic by the horns on either side of his head. “Believe in them.”

She peered back at the mages, an eyebrow raised. “Do you?”

“I’ve been out of Par Vollen for some time, and the amount of magic you’ve got behind you? Makes even a big guy like me a bit skittish,” he said, staring forward. “But they’re ready. They’re nervous, but they’re ready. It’s all they’ve been talking about.”

Her face screwed up in surprise, confusion, disbelief. “No,” she said, drawing out the word. Then she looked at him skeptically. “Really?”

He passed another sidelong look at her, his gaze amused. “You gave them their freedom,” he said, his tone plain, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “They know what that means. It wasn’t the most politically convenient decision, but it’s the one you made. They want the opportunity to prove that your faith in them was not misguided.”

She turned her gaze away, averting her eyes downward to the snow-covered path in front of her. The blind faith of Chantry believers, that made her uncomfortable—she felt, anyway, that it was undeserved. But the support and the faith of the mages was something else entirely. It was her actions that had earned her that faith, not some fable about a golden glowing woman pushing her out of the Fade. She was… unsure how to feel about it. It did not inspire the immediate feelings of rejection that she so often associated with the deference and awe people treated her with. Rather, it moved her. It was, in some strange way, far more reassuring than the words of all her friends.

She shook her head as if to shake the thought from her mind, filing it away for later. Instead, she turned back to Bull. “How have you and the Chargers been settling into Haven?”

“Well enough,” Bull responded matter-of-factly, “but Haven’s full to bursting. Your people have been ignoring it—overcrowding is hardly the most pressing issue on people’s minds—but they’ll have to deal with it soon. The Inquisition’s been sloppy, and unorganized, because something bigger was at stake. You won’t have that luxury after today.”

“We’re not—” she began, a protest on her lips, her brows pulled together. She held the lead on her horse a bit tighter. But she was hard pressed to argue, especially after that morning. Whether it was due to sloppiness, or disorganization, or some other flaw, it was true: the Inquisition could not go on as it had. The logistical problems would have to be addressed.

Bull seemed to see the thoughtful, hard expression on her face. “Hey, I just call it how I see it,” he said, holding up his hands defensively. “And I consider pointing out inconvenient truths to be part of my fee.”

“Well, how would you deal with it, then?” she asked.

“Well, for one, you’ve got no leader.”

She opened her mouth to retort, then her expression went blank. She closed her mouth, her eyes darting away from him and then back to him. “Do we need that? I mean, we all sort of lead. Cullen, Josephine, and Leliana more than I, but we share.”

Iron Bull favored her with a cool look. “That may have worked before, but it won’t stay that way. The Inquisition’s too big, now, to be run by committee. You’ve accomplished a lot, but you also haven’t really been challenged. When you are, you’ll need to react faster, and have one cohesive vision for what comes next. A committee can’t do that.” 

She was about to reply, but was interrupted by Cassandra’s voice ahead.

“We’re here!”

Iron Bull spared her one more look, before sauntering ahead to meet the Seeker at the front of the group. “Just something to think about, Herald.”

The ruins of the temple towered before them, like cracked and broken teeth in an opened mouth. A part of her was surprised to find the Temple was no longer burning; she had so associated that place with fire, and ash. Now, it was still. To her tremendous relief, she observed the Chantry had succeeded in removing the bodies that had remained after the explosion of the Conclave. (The Chantry sisters in Haven had supervised the task with the help of several of the soldiers; they had been put to rest, their ashes scattered in the wind across the mountains while the Chant was sung and gentle blessings were murmured, carried away on the same wind.)

The descent into the main chamber of the temple went slowly. It took some time to organize the Templars and the Mages, with Solas and Cassandra managing much of it. There was some discussion between Solas and Fiona about the best arrangement of the mages (how far from the Herald they should stand, how far apart from one another they should be staggered, whether they ought to circle her entirely or enclose her in a half-circle, and so on).

The result was that it took about an hour for everyone to find a place. By that time, the sun had reached its apex in the sky and was beaming brightly down on the group. Though it certainly did not help her sense of apprehension, Thanduwen spent much of that time squinting past the sun’s glare and staring up at the Breach. Instead of pondering its closure, however, she could only think about the sequence of events that had led her to be standing here, nearly six months later, the last hope to close it. 

By all rights, she should be dead; but for the life of her, she still could not remember a thing about what had happened at the Conclave, save the glimpses they had caught of herself and the Divine on their first visit to the ruins. Whether or not they succeeded in closing the Breach, she doubted that would change. The thought hung like a dark cloud in her mind, this strange mystery. What vital clues, she wondered, were being kept from her by the failure of her own memory? What kind of disadvantage did it deal her when it came to anticipating what would come next?

She knew it must be time when the Temple had suddenly grown quiet, a hush descending upon the ruin. Gone were the sounds of shuffling feet and shouted orders, replaced with a tense kind of murmuring, peppered with the sound of Solas’ approaching footsteps. She turned to him. 

“Are you ready?” he asked her, looking at her hard. 

She looked at him, at his high cheekbones and his clear eyes. Varric’s words, occurring to her in her head.

_Chuckles says it will work. Don’t you trust him?_

She nodded.

She could feel hundreds of eyes upon her, watching her with anticipation. It was as if the whole of the Temple was holding its breath. The impression was positively suffocating. She took a few steps forward, closer to the center of the Breach, away from Cassandra and the others. 

Behind her, she could hear Solas shouting, directing the mages, but she couldn’t make out the words. There was a sound, like a humming, muffling all the noise coming from behind her. Another step forward and the mark on her hand sparked, as if it, too, could sense the apprehension in the air. 

Finger by finger, she pulled off her glove. She rarely looked at her bare palm, the mark dancing and flashing and making it difficult to discern the flesh in which it sat. _Please_ , she begged, though to whom in particular she was appealing, she was not sure. _Please let this work._

Then, she felt it.

The initial rush of magic stole the breath from her lungs, and it only built from there. Swelling, amplifying, until even the air around her was awash in crackling energy. She could hear nothing else now but the roar of the Breach and the  hum of the magical energy, intensifying around her in rushing currents that threatened to sweep her away. 

It was too much. They had brought too many mages. She felt her knees buckling, her back bending; surely the force of all this magic would tear her to pieces. Is this, she wondered, what it had felt like in the Temple, in the moment before it shattered? Every part of her was thrumming and tingling and the force of it was so strong she could hardly feel it, or will her limbs to motion. For all she knew, for all she could sense, she may as well be lying twitching on the ground. Had she even been breathing? Varric, Solas, Cassandra, everyone and their misplaced hopes in her, the Breach still gaping above her as if it would swallow her—

Then, it crested.

She had one, single, shining moment of clarity. Hardly thinking, she thrust her arm upwards, palm opened towards the Breach. She was yelling—when had she started yelling?—and it felt like standing in the midst of river rapids, the energy drawn from the mages behind her rushing directly through her and upwards, along the winding light connecting her hand to the Breach, charging, churning—

And with a brilliant flash of light, _snapping._

The shockwave sent her flying backwards, planting her firmly on her ass before throwing her onto her side. The force of the fall blacked out her vision. For a moment, she just lay on the cold hard ground, feeling dizzy and weak but thankfully very much alive. When she opened her eyes, her first glance was to her hand. The mark still danced there, faintly. She sighed, and closed her fingers around it.

But the shouting. There was shouting. Shouting was not good. That brought her up, and she raised herself on her forearm, looking around, but her hurried glances found… nothing. No demons, no darkspawn, no cursed red lyrium thrusting itself out of the ground in great shards.

No sickly green light, casting its pale glow on the faces around her.

She turned her gaze upwards, a disbelieving huff forcing its way out of her lungs as she kept looking up, and up, and up… but no Breach. Not shouting, then, but whooping. _Cheering._ Weakly, still a bit disoriented, she staggered to her feet. Cassandra rushed to her side, a look of disbelief on her face to match Thanduwen’s own.

“You did it,” Cassandra said, her voice saturated with relief.

Thanduwen turned to her, the smile on her face dazzling, more pure and singular than it had been in months, the strength of it of it creasing the corners of her eyes.

 

“It’s done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Took a little longer than I would have liked for this update, real life slowed me down a bit. Thank you for your patience. 
> 
> Translations: 
> 
> Aneth ara emma lin! | Hello sister. Literally, “hello my blood.”
> 
> Fen’Harel ma ghilana! | Fen’Harel guides you. (Euphemism: more or less, you are making bad decisions.)
> 
> Ar lath, emma lin. Dareth shiral. | I love you, sister. Go safely.
> 
> Tuelanhn ama na sule melan’an. | Creators guide you until we meet again.


	9. The Lights in the Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Breach is closed, but the celebration does not last long before Haven faces a new threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Some language. Gore, violence, death by fire, graphic death mentions, NPC death, wounds. And violence. Did I mention violence?

 

Varric had not lied—by the time the procession had made their way back to Haven, the celebration was in full swing.

“I drank your mead,” his tone both apologetic and jovial at once. He had sauntered over to greet them—the swing and the swagger in his step betraying his inebriation—his shirt loose, more chest hair than usual on display to the cold mountain air. “Well, not all of it. All of the cold mead. You’re welcome to try chilling some yourself, but someone else may get to it before you bring the temperature down.”

Thanduwen had only raised an amused eyebrow at him, her smile surfacing again. It came so easily to her lips now, uninhibited. But when she caught sight of the scene behind Varric, she was positively beaming: bonfires blazing, firewood crackling. She had not seen a single musical instrument since the day she’d first awoken in Haven, but they must have been stowed away somewhere, because though she could not spot all of the players, she could hear (over the mixed sounds of merriment) all manner of lutes and horns, tin whistles and fiddles and drums being played (some with more skill than others.) Couples danced in the firelight; people huddled close, telling stories and roaring with laughter. Somewhere in the distance she could hear Sera cackling with delight.

For the first time, Haven was filled with the sounds of joy, and revelry. It was a most welcome change.

It was then that Cullen had found her, rushing down from one of the guard platforms towards her, his armor jingling with each stride. “You did it!” he said, nearly breathless, sounding both surprised and relieved. “And you’re in one piece!”

“I did, and I am,” Thanduwen said, favoring him with a smile that was both amused and—though she would have denied it vehemently—a tad affectionate. 

He looked at a bit of a loss for how to respond to that, and found himself nodding, a grin breaking out over his features. “Well, you should celebrate. We haven’t had much cause for it before—you’ve finally given us a reason.”

“And you?” she asked, her grin matching his. “Will you join them?”

“I…” he said, his voice trailing off. He shot a look over his shoulder back at the guard platform he’d just descended from, waving vaguely at it with his arm. “I’m on watch. My men have earned some time to enjoy themselves, and I want them to have that. But someone needs to keep vigilant.” His smile turned apologetic, almost embarrassed. “Burdens of command.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, her grin only widening. Varric would have called him a stick-in-the-mud for that, but Thanduwen found it almost endearing. “Well, guard duty or none, this victory belongs to you, too, Commander. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sight of Solas, meandering away from the thrum of activity and into the quiet. Her nose wrinkled in mirth and mischief.

She excused herself, then snuck after him, quieting her footsteps until she was upon him. Flush in the full bloom of her recent victory, she was feeling confident and playful. An arm’s length away, she tapped Solas on his shoulder. He turned, a confused and faintly irritated expression on his face until his eyes found her. His features softened. “Hello.”

“And where are you sneaking off to?” she asked, clasping her arms behind her back, an exaggerated look of suspicion in her eyes.

His mouth curled in mild amusement. Then he passed a pointed glance over her shoulder, in the direction of the raucous festivities behind her. “I thought I might leave and find a darker spot from which to watch the Heavens. The Breach is closed, that is true; but I thought it wise to watch for any further anomaly or disruption.” Behind Thanduwen, someone gave a shout; it was accompanied by a rowdy cheer, and the sound of tankards clinking against one another. “Besides,” Solas added, “I am not in the habit of celebrating. As you might imagine, the solitary life does not lend itself to it. Our success is sufficient reward for me.”

“‘ _I am not in the habit of celebrating_ ,’” Thanduwen repeated, her tone mocking, her suspicious look giving way to a playful grin. “You sound like Cullen. If you’ve never been to a party before, how do you know you won’t like it?”

“I did not say that,” he corrected, with a tone that suggested there was a story there (if not more than one) but for once, she was not interested in hearing it. Not for the moment, anyway.

“Well if you have,” she said, taking another half-step forward, “then you know they can be plenty of fun, and that this party in particular is of special significance and should not be missed.”

“And what makes this one special?”

She only drew closer, inches between them now. Her approach did not go unnoticed. He raised an eyebrow at the rapidly shrinking space between them, his expression quite pointed, before he lifted his eyes again to her face. It did little to discourage her. The Breach in the sky was closed, and she felt _bold_.

“If you don’t like it,” she said, the volume of her voice lowering, “you can always just walk away. We’re a stone’s throw from your cabin.”

“With all due respect, Herald,” he began, slowly, “what difference does it make to you?”

“Well, I will enjoy it more in your company, for starters,” she said, tilting her face up to his. She tugged at her bottom lip between her teeth, before breaking out into a light, airy laugh. “And secondly, because you make such an effort to appear so _serious_ all the time, but I know better. You’ve got all sorts of uncharted depths, lethallan. There’s another Solas in there,” she said, raising her hand, tapping an index finger on his chest, “and he’s begging to get out. Perhaps some drink will help in that regard.” 

That seemed to snap something in him, and he backed away from her, giving her a hard stare. “Herald, I hardly think—”

But he was cut off, abruptly, by her hand weaving it’s way into his. “One dance,” she insisted, a gleam in her eye. “One dance, and if it is really that unbearable, you can go skulking back to your cabin.”

“Da’len,” he began, an admonishment on the tip of his tongue; but she was having none of that, not tonight.

“You must do it, for _me_ ,” she cut him off, giving his hand a gentle tug, guiding him backwards into the direction of the light of the bonfires and this sound of the music. “You saw them all when we came in. They haven’t any rhythm, or the ones that do are so drunk they’ve lost it. You can’t leave me to their mercy.”

“For all you know,” Solas replied, “I could be just as terrible at dancing as they are. Even worse, maybe.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Thanduwen replied, with a grin. “You aren’t. I’ve seen you fight; you’ve got a… a natural rhythm in your limbs, a cadence,” she said, gently swaying her body back and forth in time with the tune playing behind them, curling herself up closer to him. “Besides, wouldn’t it be good, to use your body for something more joyful, something less… violent?”

She noticed he had done nothing to free his hand from hers; that was encouraging, even as he tried to brush her off again with his next words. “Commander Cullen seems quite sober,” he said, his voice quiet, watching her face closely. “You’d probably have a much easier time convincing him than me.”

Thanduwen couldn’t help the look that came over her face at that: a strange mix of revulsion and embarrassment that twisted her features before she laughed at the suggestion. “No,” she said, her tone firm. “Easier to convince, perhaps, but not preferable.” She simply beamed at him for a moment, mischief in her gaze; when she spoke again, her voice was teasing. “Younger, maybe. Are you too old for dancing, is that what this is? Creaking joints won’t permit it? How old did you say you were again?”

Solas didn’t answer; instead, he just looked at her. He met her spirited gaze with his own, and then he released a sigh, and his expression grew resigned before the corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. He raised the index finger of his free hand, then conceded: 

“One dance.”

Thanduwen laughed with delight. With Solas' hand seized firmly in her own, she led him back to the center of the settlement. He followed behind her; the pair weaved between the drunkards and the storytellers, through the scent of woodsmoke and spilled mead to the largest of the fires, where a group of soldiers-cum-musicians were playing a bright tune.

As they reached the circle of dancing bodies, the song ended with one final, cloying note, and a cheer went up from the dancers. Then there was a quiet moment, the musicians whispering to one another deviously, before (with a knowing smile) a fiddle player began to tap his foot in time, then played the first few measures of the next song: a light and lively sort of jig that seemed to be immediately recognized by the revelers around them. The dancers gave a whoop and partnered up. Then, all at once, they began to dance, twirling about the fire in a pattern of steps to which Thanduwen was helpless to recognize or replicate.

It was clearly some kind of well-known Ferelden folk dance, unfamiliar to Thanduwen; but after the fight she’d had to get Solas this far, she wasn’t about to give up. She furrowed her brow in concentration, watching the other dancers as she seized Solas’ other hand, adjusting it on her waist and raising their cupped hands slightly. 

“You don’t know how,” Solas said. His voice was soft, and his lips were curled in a smile that she might have called _fond_ if she didn’t think it was at her expense.

She gave a huff of frustration. “I know how to dance, I am a very good dancer, I am just unfamiliar with this _particular_ dance. But it can’t be too hard.”

“How fortunate for you, then, that I have such a _natural rhythm in my limbs_. From all that fighting,” he responded, playfully. He gave her a knowing grin as he lowered his hand on her waist, drawing her closer and extending their clasped hands a bit further from their bodies. 

Then, without another word, he whisked her off.

She could only laugh in surprise. She had needed to convince him, to practically drag him into the party, but he led the dance expertly, as if it had been his idea the whole time. He did not seem to know the steps himself, but he was doing a very good job of pretending he did, leading her along the twists and turns of the racing couples around them, holding her body close to his. There were a few close calls when he anticipated a step incorrectly; on more than one occasion they came very near to careening into one of the dancing pairs beside them. But Thanduwen would always see the crash coming at the last minute: she’d give a little excited yelp of warning, which would break into peals of laughter at the flash of alarm on Solas’ face as he steered her (sometimes with abrupt, but deft, force) away from collision. 

It was difficult, in those moments, not to be overly conscious of the feeling of his hand on her waist.

When he was uncertain about what step came next, he improvised. As the other revelers partook in some strange configuration of hooked arms and intricate steps, he instead spun her outward, then drew her back into his arms with surprising gentleness and grace. He had always been light on his feet; she was not sure why now, circling in time with him, it came as a surprise. 

Haven passed in flashes around them—smears of sound and color and laughter—but she hardly took her eyes off him. The dance was far from intimate—it was playful, cheerful, light—but this was the most they’d ever touched. His arms were strong around her, and he guided their steps with a deftness that she was hard-pressed to match. When their thighs brushed, or their bodies kissed together as Solas swung them away from another collision, she felt a girlish fluttering within her: a kind of joy she had not felt in a long time.

With one final repeat of the tin whistles and the drums, the jig came to a halt. The couples around them cheered for the musicians, laughed at themselves, wandering off to find their drinks or goad the players into another tune. For the first time since she’d been in Haven, no one seemed to be paying Thanduwen much attention.

Solas was still holding her. They were close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, count each of the freckles on his cheeks. She gave a nervous, forced laugh. “You’ve been holding out on me!” she accused with a good-natured grin, but he was so _near_ , and she kept catching herself looking at the curl of his lips, a heat rising in her neck and her cheeks.

His smile widened, a mischief in his eyes. “Are you blushing, Herald?”

She chuckled again, before biting her lip, her face flushed (with _exertion_ , she insisted to herself, as much as embarrassment) when she looked up at him. “You’re _very_ good.”

He opened his mouth to respond—something naughty on the tip of his tongue by the look on his face—but his eyes caught something behind her and fixed there. Frowning slightly, she turned to follow his gaze, only to find Cassandra, staring at them from beside the Quartermaster’s tent. 

Immediately, as though she’d been burned, she dropped his hand and took a step away from him. If she had not been blushing before, she almost certainly was now. Luckily, her reaction did not seem to offend Solas as much as it amused him. When she turned back to him, he was still grinning at her, even if now the grin was a bit resigned.

“Go,” he said, tilting his head ever so slightly in Cassandra’s direction. “They need you.”

She looked at him, an apology bubbling up within her, her eyebrows creasing together, reluctant to leave. _One dance,_ she’d said, but now she had a taste for it and wanted more. She drew up close to him once again, and placed a hand on his chest (feeling the rough fibers of his shirt) as she stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

“Don’t disappear.”

Then with one last grin flashed she secreted herself away, willing the pounding of her heart in her chest to slow as she made her way over to Cassandra where she stood, towering over the celebration. Cassandra, unlike Varric, looked as though her wits were still entirely about her. She smiled at Thanduwen as she approached—Thanduwen was relieved to find the smile was not in the least bit malicious, or knowing.

“I apologize for taking you away from the celebrations,” she said. “You have earned this victory.”

Thanduwen grinned at her, folding her arms casually across her chest. “Funnily enough, that sounds a lot like what I told Commander Cullen, and yet…” she said, gesturing at the settlement’s wall. Cullen still stood on the guard platform by the gate, facing out into the night, his armor glowing in the light of the fires. “No rest for the weary, I suppose.”

Cassandra looked at her sympathetically. “I will not keep you long. You, of all people, should have the opportunity to enjoy yourself. We would never have come this far without you.”

Thanduwen shook her head. She thought of Varric reassuring her all those months ago, Dorian helping them at Redcliffe, Leliana and her scouts and Josephine’s unshakable cunning and diplomacy.  “I didn’t do it alone. This victory belongs to everyone.”

“That is true,” Cassandra said, “and it is good of you to acknowledge it. But when word of spreads of how the Breach was sealed, it will be tales of your heroism that carry. Not some cobbled alliance.”

“That is a shame.”

“Perhaps,” Cassandra replied. “But it can still be used to our advantage; it is just as compelling a narrative with you in the center of it, I can promise you that. Josephine spent the time we were in the Valley drafting a missive to describe it for our diplomatic partners. I have read some of the drafts; they are most effective.”

That was par for the course. Always, the Inquisition so ready to raise her above others because of the power of the story, and what new alliances and resources they could gain by the fiction. Now, for the first time since she’d joined the Inquisition, she did not allow it to weigh on her. 

“With the Breach closed, the Inquisition will need new focus,” Cassandra continued, even as Thanduwen looked away from her and out into the mountains beyond Haven’s walls. The embers from the fires danced high into the sky, carried by the wind, and the whole scene seemed to glitter and shimmer with tiny pinpoints of light. “We have reports of lingering rifts, and many questions remain.”

But Thanduwen was no longer paying attention. Her eyes narrowed, and she squinted past the rising smoke to focus on the small lights of the sparks. 

They were moving too slowly, and against the wind.

Before either of them could say another word, they were cut off by the ringing of bells. For a moment, Thanduwen thought one of the drunkards had gotten into the Chantry bell tower. But the sound was coming from the opposite direction of the Chantry, for one; and unlike the robust, deep, solemn tolling of the Chantry bells, this one clanged with frantic alarm. 

Her eyes turned back to the mountains. There, out beyond the lake, she saw that what she had mistaken for embers were in fact such a number of torches that she could not even begin to count their flames.

“Get to the gate!” Cullen’s voice, shouting, waving soldiers down to the front of the settlement. But they were in rough shape. Many of them were still pulling their armor back on, with varying success (due to, she imagined, the amount of alcohol each of them had already imbibed that evening.) The settlement itself had become a flurry of activity. Confusion soon gave way to panic; in the place of laughter and singing, the air filled with screaming.

Thanduwen could feel her own panic rising in her like a tide. But she swallowed it. She did not know whether the Inquisition had the strength to stand against whatever force or threat was now spilling over the arms of the mountains, but she would accomplish little if she let those thoughts overwhelm her.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Whispered like a prayer, in rhythm with each of her hurried strides as she walked down to the gates to meet Cullen, with Cassandra not far behind her. Solas met them beside the stairs; he had donned his light armor, and held Thanduwen’s staff out to her, his own already strapped to his back. She nodded to him in thanks, taking the weapon without breaking stride, fastening the straps of her leather armor that had come loose during the vigor of their earlier dance. It nearly dizzied her to think that moments ago she’d been spinning, feeling safe, feeling—but she pushed the thought out of her mind as they came up to the gates, where Cullen was waiting for her, along with Leliana, Josephine, and Iron Bull.

Soldiers were already at work barricading the door. “It’s a massive force,” Cullen said, hardly sparing a glance to Cassandra as he supervised the soldier’s work. “What you can see from the scaffolding does not even amount to half; Leliana’s scouts are reporting that the bulk of the force is still over the mountain.”

“Under what banner?” Josephine asked.

“None.”

Something crashed, hard, against the door. The soldiers who had been bracing it stepped away, looking to Cullen for direction. There was a flash of bright light from the gap beneath the doors.

“It’s a boy!” another soldier called from the scaffolding, peering over the wooden gate.

From behind the door, a youthful voice: “I can’t come in unless you open!”

( _Cole’s voice, unmistakable: the first words he ever spoke to her. And whispered through a glade from a wolf of white in a sea of green-_ )

Thanduwen rushed down the steps and lifted the bar holding the doors, pushing them open. Her breath caught in her throat. There, past the gates, was no boy, but a Templar, his sword raised. But her eyes fell to the daggers piercing his breastplate, and the Templar crumpled to the ground in a pool of his own blood. 

In his place was a boy. He had the gangly and uncoordinated look of one still in the middle of adolescence, and his clothes were filthy and heavily patched. The knives he held in each hand were glistening red in the torchlight.

He rushed towards her. “I’m Cole,” the boy said, his tone so insistent it seemed he was trying to convince himself as much as her. “I came to warn you. To help. The Templars come to kill you.”

“Templars!” Cullen’s voice. “Is this the Order’s response to our talk with the mages? Attacking blindly?”

When she turned to look at Cullen, the affection of their earlier interaction was gone. How she would have liked to hear the same derision in his voice months ago, when the Templars had left Val Royeaux! But now was not the time to fight amongst themselves; she bit back the snide remarks she would have ordinarily delivered, and turned back to Cole.

“They went to the Elder One,” Cole said. “You know him? He knows you. You took his mages,” he said, turning and pointing to a distant hill top. Faintly, in the distance, they could make out two figures, standing above the Templars as they poured into the valley.

Josephine had passed Cullen a spyglass. As he peered through it, he grimaced. “I know that man,” he said, contemptuously. “But the other….” Weakly, wordlessly, he passed the glass to Thanduwen.

She held the spyglass up to her eye, peering. It took her a moment to find her mark—the only other time she’d used a glass like this, it had been the Ocularum, and that was quite a bit different—but soon her eyes caught the pattern of pines at the top of the hill, and her eyes fell on a gaunt looking man: his hair was oily and thin, and a cruel sneer tugged unpleasantly at his face. The Templar crest was painted in vibrant red upon his breast plate. But beside him….

Beside him was a vision too horrible to put into words.

She handed the spyglass back to Cullen abruptly, her face pale. “Cullen, give me a plan.”

He was shaking his head, his eyes darting as he improvised. “Haven is no fortress. We will have to control the battle, keep them from the gates for as long as possible. They won’t hold against a force of that size.”

She swallowed. Behind her, Cullen began barking orders to the mages and the few soldiers that were still sober enough to stand. Beside her, Solas and Cassandra were quiet. It was the Iron Bull who spoke first.

“Come on,” he said, taking a few steps beyond the gate. “The men will need time to load the trebuchets. We should head that way, keep the first wave off them.”

 

The first trebuchet they came to was already surrounded—but not by Templars. Or, in any case, not anything like the Templars they’d seen fighting in the Hinterlands. They were more sinister, and—if first blush was anything to go by—far more capable. 

The reason for this became almost immediately clear. One of the Templar soldiers drew close enough for Thanduwen to get a good look at him; when she did, she felt an incredible sinking feeling, like lead in the pit of her stomach. Behind the Templar’s visor, in the seconds before she struck him down with a skull cracking blow from her staff, she recognized the same twinkling crimson reflecting in the pit of his eyes that she’d seen in Solas and Sera in the false future at Redcliffe:

Red lyrium.

Everything about them was wrong. They were ghastly to behold; their spilt blood had a foul odor, too metallic and pungent and sour. And among their ranks were soldiers that were more monster than man, utter horrors who rushed in without armor (for no armor, she imagined, could be built to hold their hulking, mutated forms, which pulsed and shuddered hideously as they ran.) Their mouths foamed, and they fought with the fervor of zealots.

They were every bit as terrifying as she had imagined Templars to be as a child: enraged and witless, the twisted creatures of her nightmares. But they were real.

Her leather was slick with blood before they reached the second trebuchet. Here, the Templars had claimed ground; they prowled about the war machine, picking over the corpses of the Inquisition soldiers who had fallen defending it. At the sight of their bodies, Cassandra rushed in with a roar, outpacing even Bull in speed. Her blade was sharp enough to cut clean through armor when she brought it down upon a Templar’s head, the full force of her fury behind the blow, cleaving the helmet in two. The Templar was dead before his body hit the ground. 

They reclaimed the hillock on which the trebuchet stood, but not without difficulty; the Templars far outnumbered them, and they fought with all of their brute strength. It was skill alone that allowed Cassandra and the others to regain control of the trebuchet, and strategy that allowed them to hold the position as more Templars swarmed the war machine. 

Whenever she saw an opening, Thanduwen returned to crewing the trebuchet. She had to return to it often; no matter how many times she turned the crank—no matter how many times she pulled herself away from the fight—the trebuchet never seemed any nearer to being ready to fire.

But then, with a sound that stopped her heart, the winch _clicked._

It was a tiny sound, hardly audible over the din of the fighting around her, but she’d heard it. She scrambled off the platform beside the winch, then kicked the lever that held the windlass ropes taut; with a sickening groan, the arm of the trebuchet thrust forward. It wavered back and forth in the air, still swinging long past firing, but Thanduwen’s eyes kept to the payload as it sailed out of the trebuchet’s arms: it flew farther and higher than she’d thought it would, but the _thud_ as it met the mountainside, distant as it was, was audible above all other sounds of the fighting in the valley. 

All eyes turned to the mountain.

At that distance, the shelf of ice and snow seemed to crawl down the mountain’s face; then, without warning, it began to accelerate. A massive cloud of white, glittering faintly in the clear light of evening, frothing like the rapids of a tempestuous river as it surged down the mountainside. In the blink of an eye, the snow had swept into the valley. Before it, the trees—stronger than most from years spent battered in the shrill winds of the mountain pass—bent like reeds. In one single moment, thousands of torches were snuffed out as the Red Templars were buried beneath several tons of ice and snow.

And the valley was quiet. In the following hush it was as if everyone was holding their breath. Thanduwen almost allowed herself to feel elated; Iron Bull certainly did. He gave a cry of triumph behind her, and at her back someone was sounding the horn at the gates.

But Cassandra seemed disconcerted. “They are sounding the retreat. Why would they—”

A shadow swept over head, deeper than the night, and devouring, as if all the light in its path was swallowed up into a consummate blackness. But before they could turn their eyes up to greet it (in awe, or terror) the trebuchet beside them exploded in an inferno of white-hot flames and shattered splinters, a sound like bones crunching underfoot, followed by the most blood-curdling scream Thanduwen had ever heard. It was shrill, a sound that wormed its way into your bones and left them cold.

They could see the creature as it flew away, its great wings flapping, the trees buckling beneath the force of its flight as if they were no more than blades of grass. 

“To the gates!” Cassandra shouted, shaking them all from their stupefied reactions. But even as the four of them ran along the path back to the gates of the settlement, each of them remained painfully aware of the dragon circling in the air above their heads. They heard it each time it swept over them, but they could see it, too, the force of its wings sending the pines shuddering beneath its velocity.

Commander Cullen stood at the gates, waving the few soldiers back behind Haven’s meager walls. They seemed no better than matchsticks stood in a row; they could never withstand a dragon. How long could they possibly hold?

As if reading her thoughts, Cullen turned to her. “We need everyone in the Chantry. It’s the only building that might hold against that beast. At this point, just make them work for it.”

“ _That’s_ your plan?!” Thanduwen cried, incredulously. Making for the Chantry and sealing the doors seemed more likely to get trap them than keep them safe.

“Do you have a better one, _Herald_?” he shot, his voice nasty, a tone he had not used with her in many months. But it sobered her. Perhaps he was right; perhaps all they could hope to do, for now, was take cover where they could still get it.

But reaching to the Chantry would not be easy. Already, whether they had sought shelter from the avalanche or clawed their way out of the snow, Red Templars were lifting themselves over the walls and into the village. Though it was hardly a village any longer: tents had been reduced to smoldering piles of embers, and all around them, the cabins were alight, collapsing in on themselves, destroyed by the dragon that was still circling and spitting fire overhead.

There were too many townspeople yet who were still in the village, either trapped beneath wreckage, knocked out cold from falling debris, or cornered by the Templars that had begun to breach the gates. The four of them did a sweep of the village before they returned to the Chantry. Flissa had been knocked clean out by a beam falling from the ceiling of the tavern; Seggritt had been trapped in his own home. They saved each of them, pulling body after body out of the rubble and guiding them to the Chantry door. Finally, they came upon Adaan and Minaeve, each stretched on the ground near the apothecary.

She had failed to notice the line of fire creeping towards the pots of lamp oil in the middle of the square. She’d knelt beside Adaan, trying to coax him up, shouting his name amidst the sounds of the wooden beams of the cabins crashing and splitting and crackling around them. He’d stumbled upwards and taken off towards the Chantry, and then—as the others continued to fend off the Templars still pouring over the gate to the north—she’d moved over to Minaeve. She was shaking the researcher by her shoulders, and Minaeve was just beginning to stir (eyelids, fluttering) when Thanduwen felt firm hands on her waist, and a _wrenching_ sensation: Iron Bull, hoisting her upwards easily by her hips, pulling her abruptly away from the pots.

They exploded with a _bang_ as soon as he had dragged her clear of them.

There was screaming, shouting, the last of the villagers still making their way to the doors of the Chantry. But Thanduwen’s eyes were fixed to the spot where Minaeve had been. She’d seen all of it, the flesh falling off her face like candle wax, her ear-splitting screams, her mouth opened in pain and horror—and then she was thinking of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and the crisp bodies there, melted flesh stretched over bones cracked and dry—it was difficult for her to breathe; was that the smoke, or something else?—heaving—and the Inquisition soldiers whose blood had wet the ground around the trebuchets, and the mages dead or near to dying after a final battle with the Templars they knew they could not win—was that not why they’d given in to Alexius in the first place, to protect themselves from this exact confrontation? And yet here they were, no better off— _heaving_ , she was suffocating—and the smell, the _stench_ , of Haven burning to cinders around her, and the dragon flying overhead, charred flesh and blood and that particular, unnatural smell of red lyrium, silvery and corrupt, filling her nostrils until she could no longer make herself inhale for the scent of it—dizzying—

Then there was a hand under her arm, and she was being hoisted up, onto her feet. She wasn’t sure how she’d ended up on the ground to begin with. 

“We cannot delay,” in a voice she knew so well, and she turned to see Solas, staring at her with a look of sadness that she was too shell-shocked to feel herself. She opened her mouth as if to speak but no words would come, and she turned her face back to the spot where Minaeve had been—living, breathing, not a moment before—and the heat of the fire was caking the blood that had splattered on her face, though whether it was hers, or Minaeve’s, or a Templar’s, she could not say. But Solas would not let her linger.

“You must move,” he said, lowering his grip to her hand, and holding it tightly. “Come,” he said, and began pulling her back in the direction of the Chantry. She was too shocked and numb to will her limbs into action, nor to put up much resistance as Solas guided her away from the carnage and through the Chantry’s doors.

How many more of them would die before the evening ended, she wondered? Would any of them live to see the dawn?

 

Inside the Chantry, Thanduwen sat with her back against one of the stone columns in the main hall. There were bodies shifting, voices crying out, but she took little notice; Roderick was limping, leaning on Cole. They were discussing something, and Cullen was speaking to her, but his voice sounded distant, as though he were very far away, at the opposite end of a very long tunnel. 

Her nostrils were still full of the smell of burnt flesh; the scent was clinging to her clothes, her hair. 

Thanduwen wanted to retch. 

She tried to remind herself that the Chantry was still full of people. It was packed with mages and soldiers, clerics and pilgrims and smiths. But all she could think was that, sooner or later, they’d all meet the same fate as Minaeve. She felt powerless in the face of that certainty. The Templars would break through the doors, or the dragon would bring the roof down upon them, or, or… a thousand scenarios running through her head, and none of them with pleasant outcomes. There was blood on her gloves, still fresh, still wet, glistening in the dim light of the Chantry.

Then, above the throng of voices, she caught the words of one: the boy they’d found outside the gates, Cole.

“The Elder One doesn’t care about the _village_ ,” she heard him insisting. “He only wants the Herald.”

At those words, a deadly hush came over the Chantry. It seemed the everyone’s conversations had ceased at once, and all eyes turned to her where she was crouching, pathetically, at the base of the column, with bloodied hands and widened eyes.

Cullen took a few steps closer to her, casting his eyes about, more than aware that the whole Chantry was listening. “Herald, our position is not good. There are no tactics to make this survivable. But if we could turn the remaining trebuchet, and cause one last slide…”

“We’d have to bury Haven in order for that to have any impact on the enemy,” she said, dismissively, rubbing at the blood on her hands. But when his answer didn’t come, she looked up into his face: it was grim, and serious. Understanding dawned on her. She stood at once, fisting her hands, clutching at her armor just to hold onto _something_ as the horror of what Cullen was suggesting took hold of her.

“You want me to _bury_ us!”

“If we must die, then let us do it on our terms,” Cullen said, his voice hissing and passionate. He drew closer to her, his voice dropping in volume so they could speak in something closer to privacy. “ _You_ have hated the Templars from the beginning. If we perish, would you rather do it crouching in the Chantry like a coward, or taking the Order out with you?”

“That is _not a plan_ , Cullen, that is suicide!” she hissed back, staring defiantly up into his face. “What I would do—what I would give up—is irrelevant. I am not the leader you think I am, I cannot make that decision for all of these people. I can’t just let them die, crouched in here like, like—there has to be some way to—”

“Chancellor Roderick can help.”

Cole’s voice, again, cutting through her argument with Cullen. Thanduwen turned to him, as curious as she was skeptical. Roderick had been a bureaucrat, a thorn in their side since the Conclave. If he had his way, she’d have been tried for the Divine’s death months ago. But if he had something, now, while lying on his deathbed…. she lowered her gaze to meet his. 

“There is a way out. A path,” Roderick said, slowly. It was clear that every word he spoke came at tremendous effort. “Through the mountains. You wouldn’t know it unless you’d made the summer pilgrimmage, as I have. But it will allow the people to escape. Andraste must have shown me, so that I could… so that I could tell her Herald.” He looked right at Thanduwen, and his eyes were so full of faith and devotion that it set a knot in her throat. She had never thought she’d live to see that look on Roderick’s face; now that she did, she didn’t like it.

But she pushed the rush of emotion out of her mind, and turned to Cullen, her eyes determined. Roderick’s words had snapped something in her. There was a tiny glimmer of hope; that was all she required to save her from the despair she’d felt just moments before. 

“Will it work?” she asked Cullen. “Can you get them out the back?”

“Possibly,” Cullen said, his words slow, his expression thoughtful. “But we’ll need enough time to get everyone out of the valley. And we’ll still need someone to fire to trebuchets to prevent the army from following our trail.”

“I will.”

There was an awkward pause. For a moment, Cullen only looked at her as though she had not yet comprehended the full meaning of her words, as if he expected her to rescind the offer. Then, when no such response came, he asked, “But what of your escape?”

Thanduwen had no response for him. What was there for her to say? The Templars were here, and it was clearly her fault. Whether it was because she had taken the mages from the Venatori, or that the Templars were threatened by the alliance between the mages and the Inquisition, it did not matter. Those decisions had been hers, she had _fought_ for them; they were her crimes to pay for. Too many lives had been lost already, and she would not be responsible for more death, not if she could help it. 

For a time, they only stared at one another. But Thanduwen’s expression was resigned, committed. Eventually—uneasily—Cullen looked away from her. “Perhaps, you will surprise it, find a way…” 

But while he went off to begin the preparations, evacuating the Chantry of the survivors, she wandered over to where Cole sat beside Chancellor Roderick.

“He’s going to die,” Cole said, simply, though his voice was sad. Roderick’s breathing was irregular, and labored. A drop of blood was drying at the corner of his mouth.

She had _hated_ this man; they had distrusted one another from the beginning, and not without good reason. He had used his influence to weaken the Inquisition from the beginning; until this moment, he had only looked upon her with loathing. But he had saved them. She did not forgive him (she _could_ not forgive him) for how he had obstructed them the past six months. But whether or not she forgave him, it had little to do with the gratitude she felt now. 

Gently, she reached down and took one of his hands. She pressed it to her mouth and kissed it gently. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, after a reluctant pause, she added, “May you walk safely the paths into the Beyond; may Andraste herself await your coming. You have done what I could not—you have saved us.” 

She held no faith in Andraste; enemies though they had been, Chancellor Roderick knew that much about her. But all the same he smiled, and he squeezed her hand gently, looking up into her face.

“I was wrong about you, Herald,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “And you are wrong, too, I think. Andraste will spare you. You will know her grace, and see the Light, before this is over.”

That, she did not believe, and under any other circumstances, she would have recoiled, argued. But Roderick was dying in front of her; for once—for this first and last time—she would let him have the final word.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cullen, waiting. Gently, she removed Roderick’s hand from her forehead and placed it on his chest, whispering a farewell and a final word of thanks to the Chancellor as she rose to face the Commander.

“I’ve sent out soldiers. They’ll load the trebuchet. You need to keep attention away from us until we are above the tree line—look to the northeast. If Roderick has described the path correctly, that is where we will climb out of the valley. I will signal you when we are safe: we will loose two arrows, wreathed in flame.”

“And I will stand by your side, Herald,” came Cassandra’s voice, walking out of the throng behind Cullen. Solas and Bull were behind her. “For as long as I am able. You will not face these foes alone.” She inclined her head to Thanduwen almost reverently. 

“This plan seems ill-conceived,” said Solas, his expression unreadable. “And I do not condone the ease with which you seem to have decided to lay down your life. But I will protect you, for as long as I can.”

Bull’s arms were crossed over his massive chest. He only shrugged, a smile on his face. “I’ve been a mercenary for a long time, but I’ve never got this close to a dragon before. I’m not about to pass up the chance now.”

 

Outside, everything was still burning. Several of the cabins had collapsed on themselves and stood smoldering, the fire climbing up the debris in towers of flame. The fire had melted the snow and the ground was soggy, and warm. Beneath her leather armor, Thanduwen was sweating. Even in the heat of summer, of Solace, it had never been this hot. Smoke rose so thick and high in the sky that there was no sight of moon or stars overhead, merely an oppressive black cloud. It was more than thick enough to cloak the dragon; they would be lucky if they had any warning the next time it attacked.

Her home was burning—with a bittersweet start, she realized for the first time that she’d come to think that way. _Her home._  

No longer.

While they had sheltered themselves within the Chantry, the Red Templars had taken the village. They prowled between the wastes of burning debris. They seemed to have been waiting, patiently, biding their time. As soon as the doors of the Chantry swung open, and their helms turned to face her, it became apparent what they had been waiting for.

Cole was right: they had come for her.

The four of them cleaved a path through the ranks of the Templars, and they fell beneath the warriors’ weapons and a hail of lightning and ice. Down the stairs they rushed, past the place where the Quartermaster’s tent once stood, past where Seggrit used to sell his wares. To their surprise (and relief) they found the remaining trebuchet unguarded. 

Their path to the trebuchet was clear, but the path back to the Chantry soon closed behind them, for the Templars had pursued them, and soon they were upon them: archers and soldiers with massive tower shields. There were far too many Templars for Cassandra and Bull to hold a line of defense and keep them far enough away from Thanduwen and Solas for them to have the time needed to spell cast, never mind crew the trebuchet.

But Thanduwen was undaunted. There was an end in sight, now. All they had to do was hold the Templars back until Cullen gave the signal. After that, it mattered little what condition she was left in, so long as she had the strength to fire the trebuchet.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins like thunder, and she moved without thinking, shifting between the spell casting stances that had become second nature after half a year’s time of defending herself. She pulled her magic from the Fade easily, feeling the swell of mana in her before she shaped it with a gesture, sending the magic forth to rain down on the templars as columns of white-hot energy. Her black hair was lifted about her face like halo, standing on end from the rush of electricity that coursed through her every time she shaped the mana into another lethal bolt. The rush of it leaving her was exhilarating. For once, she allowed herself the feeling of satisfaction, her confidence growing with each Templar she smote. She had never allowed herself to feel such pride in destruction before—but she no longer had room within her for guilt, or compassion. 

The Iron Bull swung his weapon with such force it sent the templar’s bodies, crumpled bags of broken bones, sailing across the courtyard. Out of the corner of her eye, Thanduwen saw Cassandra bash a Templar Guard with her shield so hard that the blow she must have broken his jaw. It was not long before the area surrounding the trebuchet was strewn with bloodied and broken bodies; but still, the Templars kept advancing.

It was no longer a battle of strategy. The area was too large, and the Red Templars kept coming from all directions: down the mountainside, or over the timber wall before them, and there was no way to funnel or choke them into the warrior’s direction. The formation they had initially devised to defend the trebuchet had broken long ago. In the wave of Templars overtaking them, it was difficult enough for each member of the Inquisition to defend themselves, never mind one another.

A Red Templar soldier had come upon Thanduwen, their sword raised to attack. But before they could deliver the blow, Thanduwen had both her hands clasped around her staff, and she swung it with all her strength around his body; the staff came down upon the Templar’s shoulders and back with a tremendous force and a sickening crack. He lay at her feet, dizzied, fumbling in the snow to lift himself up. But before he was more than a few inches off the ground, Thanduwen’s foot was on his back, pinning him down. She raised her staff over his body and stabbed downwards, the staff blade piercing through the Templar’s armor. She wrenched her arms, twisting the blade in the wound, and the Templar grew still; when she pulled her staff from his lifeless body, it gave a sickening squelch.

She glanced upwards, scanning the battlefield for her friends ( _for Solas_ ) to be sure they had not fallen. But when she turned around, her eyes still searching for Cassandra, she came face to face with another soldier. Before she could react he thrust his shield forward; she turned her head just in time to spare herself a broken nose, but she caught the shield’s blow with the side of her face, and it sent her reeling. She stumbled backwards, tripping over her own feet and landing on the hard ground. A jolt of pain raced up her hips and through her spine. The Templar followed her and stood above her, raising his sword. 

Her staff was still clutched firmly in her hand; even in her disorientation, she had held it tightly. She wrapped her other hand around the grip and swung it through the Templar’s legs and upwards; the blow surely hadn’t injured the Templar, but they were doubled forward, a vicious hissing sound audible through their helm. In the seconds bought by the cheap blow, Thanduwen rose to her knees, and pulled enough magic through from the Fade to release a ball of fire straight into the Templar’s face.

She could see nothing behind the metal of his helm, but there was that smell again of charred flesh. The Templar fell to the ground in front of her, clutching his helmet, trying desperately to pull it over his head; but either his flesh or the metal had become too hot from the spell, and by the Templar’s screams it seemed the two had fused together so firmly that he could no longer pull the helm off. 

A moment later he was still; but Thanduwen was no longer looking. She knelt in place, surveying the battle, and found herself safe, if only for the moment. What Templars remained surrounding the trebuchet were paying her no mind. Sweeping out her arms, she cast a barrier over the Iron Bull and Cassandra. A hideous thing, with a bare chest and arms that were no more than sharp, pointed crystals of lyrium, tried to sneak past them; without missing a beat, Cassandra unleashed her grappling chain, neatly hooking the beast and pulling it back towards her. A swift blow of her sword stilled the creature; he fell to the ground at Cassandra’s feet and did not stir.

To her right, Solas sparred with an archer. A shimmering barrier was cast about him; he directed the concentrated strength of the barrier with his hand, waving his arms in lithe gestures to deflect each of the archer’s incoming arrows while, behind the Templar, Solas laid a series of cleverly placed ice runes. As Solas advanced towards him, deflecting each blow, the archer stumbled backwards; his foot caught the edge of one of Solas’ runes, and the magic sent him flying backwards in a blast of ice.

But behind Solas, another soldier had crept. His tower shield protected him from any spell that Solas might weave, and his sword was raised; but his back, unguarded, was vulnerable to Thanduwen. She pulled again on the magic of the Fade; she could feel frost on her fingertips where they clutched the handle of her staff, and when she thrust it forward, pointed squarely in the Templar’s direction, three bolts of ice, sharp as knives, sailed forward and punched neatly through the Templar’s armor, burying themselves into the muscles of his back. Solas turned, a look of surprise on his face. He widened his arms and let loose a barrage of hail that struck the Templar with such force it dented his armor, the metal crumpling like parchment beneath its weight.

The two mages shared a brief look, but soon Thanduwen’s attention was turned away. In the distance, outside of the circle of skirmishing warriors around Cassandra and Bull, a Red Templar stood, but they were larger than a normal man: taller and twice as broad. Red Lyrium peaked from beneath their armor, as if it had been planted in their very flesh, growing outwards and decorating their armor with spikes like great red horns. She saw him raising his arms; a thread of energy surged forth from them, and met another soldier at Bull’s side. The magic pinned the soldier’s arms to his sides and lifted him into the air. Thanduwen stood, transfixed, her expression curious—she had no room left for horror, that part of her long silenced—as the guard’s flesh roiled and bubbled beneath his armor. Then with a scream and a bursting that sent his breastplate and gauntlets flying from body and across the field (Cassandra ducked out of the way just in time to avoid being clobbered by a particularly lethal looking pauldron) he was released from the air, and when he met the ground he was something else entirely: less like a man and more like a beast, Red Lyrium crystals dotting the surface of his skin, and liquid lyrium dripping from the gaping pores in his body like mucus from a slug.

“Cassandra!” she shouted, pointing at the Knight. Cassandra flashed her a look, then ran towards the Templar, as Bull cleaved a path to join her from across the field. But Thanduwen’s shout had attracted attention to herself; as the two warriors moved to take down the Knight, another Templar came up beside her, his sword raised high.

She raised her staff horizontally to block the attack, catching the Templar’s blade before it could fall. But the sword was just sharp enough to notch the iron of her staff; it buried itself in the metal. They struggled; the Templar tried in vain to wrench his blade free, as Thanduwen pushed back against him with her staff, making it harder for him to release his weapon. 

She looked him dead in the face and gave a scream like she never had before, fiercely, not out of fear but adrenaline and rage. It was enough. In the split second of the Templar’s hesitation, twisting her staff upright once more so that the Templar lost his grip on the blade. Her right hand reached for the handle, and in one clean motion—before he could even realize what was happening—she lopped his head clean off of his shoulders. It fell to the ground, rolling out of the helmet before coming to rest among the powdered snow of the battlefield. His eyes were wide, his expression frozen in surprise, but the madness of the red lyrium still danced within their glassy, vacant depths.

Sword in hand, Thanduwen crept around the back of the trebuchet, sneaking behind another Templar archer. He did not hear her footsteps as she approached, so quiet was her movements compared to the sounds of the fighting around them. But though he did not see her, another Red Templar did. He gave a shout across the field.

“Behind you!”

The templar turned; before he could fully face her, Thanduwen thrust the sword through his breastplate. The Templar fell with a groan. But she’d attracted too much attention to herself; when she looked up, she saw (too late) a rain of arrows headed in her direction from across the field. She brought her arms over her head and cast a hasty barrier spell, but she was not fast enough. Though several arrows missed their mark, one arrowhead buried itself in her leg; another punched clean through her shoulder. She felt every inch of the shaft as it slid through leather armor and skin and sinew. The pain stole the breath from her lungs, but she could not give in to it; she focussed on maintaining the strength of her barrier as more arrows flew in her direction. Then, with a shout, her barrier exploded in a shockwave of energy that sent the Templars flying backwards.

The battle raged on; wave after wave of Templars came over the walls and along the paths from the mountains to waylay them, an impossible and relentless horde. Then, suddenly, they stopped. All was quiet, save the sounds of the village center still burning: even this far away, they could hear the crackling of fires, the snapping of pine sap as it bubbled and spat under the heat of the flames.

None of them, however, seemed wiling to relax. “Be on your guard,” Cassandra said, when they came together around the platform of the trebuchet. “That cannot be all of them.”

The moment of respite was tenuous, and none could say how long it would last. Each of them drank from their store of potions to restore their strength. The battle had taken a heavy toll on each of them; though no one voiced it, each of them wondered how much longer they could go on. 

Cassandra had paced over to the winch, and was crewing the trebuchet; but she walked with a slight limp, and there was blood seeping through the armor of her left leg, though she did not complain. Solas did not seem to have so much as a scratch on him, but he looked _stretched_ , a weariness that Thanduwen knew only too well, for she felt that same weariness herself: they were both at the point where there was only so much magic left to draw on, and each time they had to reach through the Fade for more, the toll grew higher.

The Iron Bull was by her side, inspecting her wounds. He was bleeding heavily from a gaping would cut across his back, but he had assured her that it was “not as bad as it looked.” 

Thanduwen raised her arm, wincing as she did so, Bull scrutinizing the wound there. Without warning, he snapped the shaft (still protruding from her shoulder) cleanly in two, then, “ _Hold still,_ ” as he pulled the feathered tip out from the front, and yanked the arrowhead out from the back. The two shafts came free with a dull _slurping_ sound, but the feeling sent Thanduwen reeling with pain again; she had to hold onto Bull’s forearm to steady herself as she forced herself to breathe through it.

When she opened her eyes again, Bull was holding the arrow shaft to his face. He held it to his nose, smelling it cautiously for a moment, before licking the arrowhead experimentally. “No poison,” he concluded, his tone almost cheery despite the circumstances. Then, with a grim look to her leg, “I can’t do much about that, though.”

Thanduwen grimaced. The arrowhead was buried deep in her thigh, and it had not come clean through the other side, like the wound in her shoulder; she could feel the arrowhead every time she moved. Without a clean exit, it was riskier to try and pull the arrow out. Instead, with a huff, she wrapped her hands around the shaft and snapped it in half a few inches above the wound. At least now the shaft would not be waggling loosely abound her as she tried to cast her spells.

The quiet persisted, unnerving, and each click of Cassandra crewing the trebuchet seemed loud in the near silence. They hadn’t seen the dragon it what seemed like an impossibly long time, but Thanduwen did dare to hope that the beast had fled. They all looked around them; Thanduwen searched the northeast sky in vain for Cullen’s signal. _Where were they?_

Solas had not lowered his staff, but his eyes were closed, and he looked troubled. A look of intense concentration was on his face. as if he were trying to feel something out in the battlefield around them, as if he could pull through the Fade impressions of what lay behind their view.

Suddenly, there was a deep and distant _boom,_ and the sound of a great force of Red Templars as they cheered beyond the gates. But even as the cheering died down there was another crash, followed by another, _boom, boom._

Solas opened his eyes, looking back in the direction of the village. His face looked pale. “It’s massive,” he said quietly, clutching his staff tightly in his hand. Cassandra abandoned the trebuchet, dropping off the platform and positioning herself in front of the others, her sword raised.

A fell roar filled the air: a cry of anguish, and fury. Then, there was a tremendous crash: further down the path, the wooden gate at Haven’s entrance crumbled to splinters. Where the gate had once stood, a towering, crimson mass rose into view: dreadful and terrifying to behold. 

The giant, crystalline form gleamed in the light of the fires. It stood on spindly legs, encrusted with lyrium, but each of the monster’s footsteps echoed through the valley, and the ground quivered beneath its feet. From its core, great pinnacles of lyrium thrust upwards. A templar helmet sat amongst these great barbs the faintest suggestion that what stood before them now was once a man. But if it had once been a man, it surely was no longer: it was a creature consumed by the lyrium, more loathsome than anything Thanduwen had seen in the future at Redcliffe. Of its two arms, one was a slender, weak looking appendage, though it had been elongated, and each of its long fingers had become a deadly, pointed claw. The other arm was hulking, and massive, and it terminated in a cluster of lyrium that the creature dragged on the ground behind it like a bludgeon, though its end had been sharped to a point.

When the behemoth spotted them, it let out an ear-splitting howl of rage and despair; even at that distance, they could smell the stench of its breath, heavy with the metallic and corrupted scent of the red lyrium.

Cassandra turned to them, speaking quickly and firmly. “The trebuchet is all that matters if the others are to escape,” she said, and looked at Thanduwen with a hard expression. “Mages, if you can pull yourself away from the fight safely, you _must_ keep crewing the trebuchet. Bull, we must prevent that— that _thing_ from getting close enough to the war machine to destroy it before we can fire. If it does…”

But she did not finish her thought. Bull heaved his battle-axe into his hands, looking forward at the behemoth and sinking into a defensive stance. 

Solas moved first; with an elegant wave of his arms and staff, he sent several large blades of ice soaring in the behemoth’s direction. They met their mark, and shattered against the lyrium on impact. But though the magic did little visible damage, the behemoth must have felt the blow, because it turned to them and let out another scream of rage; then, with surprising speed for its size, it began barreling towards them.

It strode straight past Cassandra and Bull, who each delivered expert blows to the monster’s shins, but that did little to slow it. Behind the behemoth now streamed a new wave of Templars, archers and soldiers and knights. Cassandra’s sword flashed, and Bull swung his axe, but no matter how many of the Templars they cut down, the behemoth had already broken their line.

It staggered towards Solas and Thanduwen, raising its club of an arm; Solas dove to the side, but Thanduwen rolled forward, diving between the creature’s legs and crouching behind it. A wave of pain rocked through her from where the arrowhead was still burrowing into her thigh (the roll had not helped) but she fought past it, her words coming out of her mouth in a steady hiss as she waved her hands above the ground behind the behemoth, stamping the earth with fire runes.

Solas saw her lay them down; as soon as she had moved to the side, he raised his staff and forced a gail of cold air into the behemoth’s face, flakes of ice dancing into its eyes. The behemoth screamed, and its spindly arm raised to its face, its clawlike fingers trying in vain to brush the cold out of its eyes as it stumbled backwards, straight onto Thanduwen’s fire runes.

They exploded with a loud bang, but the roar of pain from the behemoth was deafening; Thanduwen had to clap her hands over her ears. The creature turned to face her. But as it did, Bull appeared beside her; he sprang forward, beating his battle axe against the creature’s shins. The behemoth staggered under his blows; as it did, Thanduwen turned, and with a flash of light she struck two Templar archers to the ground.

The ground around Cassandra was littered with bodies: she stepped over them as Bull splintered the creature’s shins, and threw her grappling chain, hooking it easily on one of the behemoth’s many pinnacles. Then she gave a mighty heavy; by some combination of her remarkable strength and the work Bull was doing to unsteady the creature, she succeeded in pulling it forward, away from the trebuchet. Her face transformed into a fearsome snarl, and she dug her heels into the ground, dragging the monster away from the war machine.

But the behemoth was more intelligent than it looked; it hooked its clawed hand into the grappling chain, and pulled hard. The chain pulled taut, towed Cassandra across the battlefield. Her body dragged against the ground before she released the chain from her grip, and eased herself gingerly back to her feet, the front of her armor streaked with mud and gore.

A templar made a sprint for her; Solas caught it with a sheet of ice, freezing it mid-blow before it could reach her. Cassandra turned to face the Templar, and brought the pommel of her sword down firmly on its chest. The Templar shattered.

Thanduwen was still striking the behemoth. With each move she sent more blasts of lightning straight into the monster’s face, but it seemed only to enrage it; within a few strides it had backed her against what remained of the timber fence. She looked to the side and sunk low, coiling what strength remained in her legs, preparing to spring away—but then the behemoth’s arm crashed to the ground, and from the place where his arm had connected, red lyrium burst forth and encircled her, trapping. She looked up into the behemoth’s face as it raised its arm for second blow.

It happened so quickly: one moment, Solas was across the field, and the next he was beside her, within the lyrium circle, his staff raised over their heads, casting a powerful barrier above them the moment before the behemoth’s arm descended. It would have turned the mages into pulp; instead, it glanced harmlessly off the bubble of the barrier. Solas’ legs trembled with the effort of maintaining the spell; it had been dangerous, for him to fade-step so far across the field and hold the barrier immediately after. There was sweat on his brow, and a look of fierce determination in his eyes, but she did not know how long he could hold. The behemoth leaned in closer to the two of them, hissing; from its mouth red lyrium sprayed like rain, and it ran in red rivulets down the sides of Solas’ barrier, glistening like blood.

The behemoth had become so preoccupied with them that it had ignored the warriors behind it; Thanduwen could not prevent the gasp that escaped her as she saw Cassandra’s head peak over the great lyrium shards of the behemoth’s shoulders. The grappling chain still hung tightly from one of the behemoth’s spikes; Cassandra had seized it, used it to climb atop the creature. With one hand, she held the chain tightly; in the other, she raised her sword above the behemoth’s head. Then, with a triumphant yell, she thrust the sword downward through the behemoth’s helm.

The monster roared, reeling backwards; the barrier dissolved around the mages, and Solas fell to the ground with a choking sound, his body trembling from the exertion of holding the shield for so long and against such force. Thanduwen dropped beside him, her hand on his back, prepared to cast another barrier herself if the behemoth fell in their direction. Cassandra leaped off of the behemoth as it staggered, her sword still lodged in the creature’s head as she rolled away to safety. 

The behemoth lurched about the field; it swayed dangerously close to the trebuchet, its limbs flailing. As it teetered it let loose a wail so pained and mournful that Thanduwen could hardly bear to hear it; then it stumbled, and fell, crashing to the ground beside them. Tiny shards of red lyrium scattered beneath it like a thousand rubies, all lit from within by an unnatural flame.

Then, it was quiet again. Thanduwen peered once more to the northeast sky, but no signal came; all the same, it was time. Solas had nearly spent himself on that last barrier spell, and Cassandra’s limp had worsened; she could ask no more of them.

Thanduwen wrapped her arm around Solas, and helped him to his feet; he was still weak, but he could stand. “You need to go,” she said to him, then turned to Cassandra and Bull. “All of you. You need to get out of here. I haven’t seen Cullen’s signal yet, but the trebuchet is nearly ready; if you are to have any chance of getting out….”

The Iron Bull inclined his head towards hers in farewell, his arm across his chest, his fist over his heart; Cassandra nodded her head solemnly. “Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, Herald of Andraste. It has been an honor and a privilege to fight by your side.” But then, Cassandra stood, looking behind Thanduwen; neither Cassandra nor Bull moved to leave.

“Solas?” Cassandra asked.

Thanduwen turned. Solas was standing just behind her, his hands clenched to fists, unmoving. He looked at Thanduwen and opened his mouth, hesitant, before turning his eyes back to Cassandra.

“One moment. I will be right behind you.”

Cassandra’s glance flickered between the two of them for a moment; she seemed unwilling to leave Solas behind, knowing that the Inquisition could not afford to lose both its Herald and its arcane expert. But this was not a time for arguments if they were to make a swift exit. “Be quick,” she said, then turned. Her limp had worsened considerably; she leaned on Bull as they walked away, back in the direction of the Chantry, where they would follow Roderick’s path into the mountains.

Solas turned back to Thanduwen. His hands clutched to his staff to keep him upright (so spent was he from the casting of spells) but his expression was stern. “Are you sure this is wise?” he asked. “You have the mark; we have closed the Brach, but none can predict what will come in the months ahead. You are needed, yet; if you die, now—”

She shook her head, _no_ , outright refusal; she had made her decision, and it was not up for negotiation. “I started this,” she said, quietly, sadly. “I cannot ask someone else to finish it.” 

His expression shifted; he looked at once so pained and proud, and he swallowed visibly before he spoke again. He nodded in the direction behind her, then spoke quickly. “There are tunnels, beneath the settlement. Leliana and her people have been exploring them for weeks. They are dangerous, and prone to collapse, but they may provide you with a way out to the mountainside. You must make me a promise—a _dirtha’vhen’an,_ ” he said, his voice insistent, and his eyes searched hers as he reached forward and took one of her hands tightly in his own. “Promise me that you will try to find a way out.”

“ _San_ ,” she said, quietly. She had little hope that she would find the tunnels in time to escape the avalanche; even if she did, she doubted she’d have any luck navigating them. Better to die at once, she thought, than starving in those storied tunnels, or being crushed to death in a tunnel collapse. But his concern moved her; he was pleading with her, and she could not look into his face and deny him. “I will try. But you need to go.”

For a moment, he simply looked at her. Then he sighed, a sound of such weariness that even Thanduwen could feel it’s weight, something resigned and sorrowful and so painfully _vast_. He drew closer to her and released her hand; gently, he brought his palm to her face, holding it gently, his thumb tracing over her cheek. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her brow; as he kissed her she could feel the softness of his breath from his nose, and her eyes stung with tears.   
  
“Dar’atisha, lethallin,” he whispered quietly, his lips brushing against her forehead before he pulled away. The way he looked at her was almost too much; there was so much she wanted to tell him, confess to him. The times she had watched him moving in the dark. How he had always made her feel safe. That this whole adventure, the Inquisition and all, had only ever been bearable because he had been at her side. That his companionship had been more valuable to her than anything; that she had treasured every moment spent with him over the past six months. 

But it would be selfish of her, she thought, to leave him with all those feelings now, when it was far too late for either of them do do anything about it. And she did not have the time.

Distantly, they heard the sound of the dragon again, screaming from some distance; but it would cross that distance swiftly. “Go,” she said, pulling away from him. “Get out of here. You may not have much time.” She pushed him firmly away from her, then headed for the trebuchet’s winch.

She did not allow herself to turn and watch him leave.

Each crank of the trebuchet was a tremendous effort; she was spent, tired, bloodied. Her muscles screamed in exhaustion with every turn and she, she was screaming too—her teeth bared as a guttural yell bubbled past her mouth—if she was to die today, she would not do so quietly. _Let that thing hear you_ , Cullen had said. She did.

But above the sound of her own shouting she could hear it again like a rumor on the wind: the trees creaking under the force of the dragon’s great wings. She turned the winch, desperate, pushing through the pain of her body; her heart fluttered when she heard the _click_ of the trebuchet tightened, fastened, and she looked up to the sky not a moment too soon: the dragon was overhead, it was swooping straight in her direction.

The curse barely left her lips before it was swallowed up in the sound of the impact that dragon’s breath made on the scene around her: a deep _thoom,_ and the deceptive rustling sound of the fire spreading around her. A great conflagration: the trebuchet was ringed with flame, from the treetops to what was still left standing of the timber fence.

She felt herself sweating anew in the heat. Her muscles protested as she raised herself up; she was exhausted, spent. But there was little left for her to do. Despite the dragon’s fire the trebuchet still, stood at the ready. All she needed to do was walk over to it and kick the lever free….

But as she squinted among the smoke and ash and embers, her eyes could make out something coming towards her that put a cold fear and a dread in her heart; she froze her where she sat, still struggling to her feet. A ghastly silhouette, too warped to be the figure of a man, walking between the licking flames as if they could not touch him. She recognized the shape immediately from the brief look she’d had in Josephine’s spyglass. 

The Elder One.

With a great crash, the ground trembled; the dragon had landed behind her, and closed off the path back to the village. There was no where to run. She held herself as the ground stilled beneath her, and closed her eyes. 

Silently, she mouthed a prayer of thanks to her Gods: June and Mythal and even Elgar’nan. She had parted with Solas and the others just in time. The Elder One had come for her, and her alone; the others would be safe.

She raised herself and stood, her shoulders back, defiant in the face of the horrifying creature that now sauntered towards her, enveloped in flames. However horrific the Templars had been, this creature was far more hideous: flesh stretched, flapping uselessly over ribs cracked by armor, the skin of his face pulled taut over shards of lyrium that erupted from his skull like the great horns of a dragon. The Elder One was a hulking mass of elongated limbs and flesh knitted over unnatural protrusions: metal and skin, and the glow of red lyrium dancing in his core.

“Enough!” he shouted. “Pretender. You toy with forces beyond your ken. No more.”

She did not think for a moment that she could defeat this creature; but defiance was all she had left. She had to buy the others time to get out of the valley. In the blast of the dragon’s fire, she had lost her grip on her staff; it now lay several strides away on the ground. She lunged for it. 

But before she could even get close, a pain so terrible pierced through her concentration that for a moment she could neither breath nor see through the intensity of it. When she could see again, blinking through the darkness the pain had cast over her eyes, she was knelt on the ground, and her hand was bright and terrible behold, crackling and spitting in a fearsome fit of energy. The pain was like fire in her veins, a thousand tiny needles working their way up her arms and into her shoulder. It was so terrible she could barely breath, and each inhale sent the sharp pain shooting further up her arm and across her chest.

The Elder One approached. “You resist when you would do better to kneel. You will learn. Though your education, I’m afraid, will be most brief.” She turned her head to face him, but could barely raise her eyes above his knees for the pain in her hand. Yet there, clutched in his, he held an orb of stone: a small and plain thing. But it glittered and sparked with the same energy as her hand.

Surely, it was the artifact Solas had spoken of. But before she could get a better look at it, the Elder One thrust his arm forwards; the orb flashed with light, and she screamed as her arm was flooded with fresh pain. It was agony; it felt as though the flesh were melting from her hand. And above the sound of her own cries she could still hear his voice…

“Blame me not for your suffering, for you have brought it upon yourself, _Herald_. You interrupted a ritual years in the planning, and instead of dying, you stole its purpose. It was a mistake, to let you walk free; a mistake for which those responsible have paid for with their lives, a mistake which now falls to me to correct. You will return the anchor to me; then, you will perish, for such insolence must surely be met with punishment, and retribution.”

Through the pain in her arm, she forced her gaze upwards, staring defiantly into his face even as the pain in her arm had her teeth grinding. “The anchor—what is it for?”

But instead of replying, he reached out for her; despite the pain, she felt her skin crawling with revulsion as his hand closed around the wrist of her left hand and pulled her upwards. His touch was cold, and clammy, but he lifted her off the ground with ease, as though she were no more than a doll.

“What you flail at rifts, I crafted to assault the very heavens,” Corypheus said, and this close, she could smell his breath: death, and decay, and all the rotten things in the cursed depths of the Void. “Beg that I succeed; for I have seen the throne of the Gods, and it was empty.”

Then, sneering, he threw her. She crashed into the ground a few feet from the platform of the trebuchet, the breath forced from her lungs from the impact. But her hand—she could feel her hand. She looked down at it in surprise. It was still flickering, shuddering, but the pain and lessened. She clenched her fist experimentally. The pain had become less sharp, and it was concentrated now only in her hand and her wrist. The sharp burning that had raced up her forearm and through her shoulder was gone. She turned her eyes to the Elder One.

“The anchor is permanent. You have spoiled it with your stumbling.” He was walking towards her, the dragon was advancing behind him, hemming her in against trebuchet. “But it is no matter. I will begin again; I will find another way to give this world the nation and the God it requires.”

But then, behind him, _finally_ : in the darkness of night beyond the burning of Haven, she saw something that had her heart rising in her throat. A tiny speck of light, an arrow lit with flame, soared high into the night sky before it plunged back to earth. It was followed closely by a second. Cullen’s signal. They were out, then: the mages and the merchants and the pilgrims and the clerics. They were clear of the valley.

“But you will not live to see my full glory; for I will suffer no rivals, even the reluctant.”

Corypheus was still speaking; she turned her eyes to him, repossessed of her ferocity, rebellion written plainly on her face. If she was to die, it would not be between the jaws of that monstrous dragon. There were still Templars in the Valley. She could see their small lights beyond the fence. The Elder One might escape the destruction she was about to unleash, but his Templars would not. 

It would be enough. It would buy Cullen and the others the time they needed.

She thought of Solas, then: not as he was ( _not the farewell that had nearly been enough to tear her from her duty_ ) but as he had been, at Redcliffe. The glow of red lyrium in his eyes, the brittle look of his skin, the strange resonant cadence of his voice when she had reached out to him. _I am dying, but it is no matter. This world is an abomination and it must never come to pass._ Even in the face of death and obliteration, he had been brave, all for the hope that some might yet be saved, if not himself.

The vision steeled her. She breathed deeply, then rose to her feet, staring Corypheus in the face.

“Alexius underestimated me,” she said, her voice full of confidence, her chin raised in defiance. “You would do well to learn from _his_ mistake. I swear to you this: the only glory you will live to see is that of the force that will rise to challenge you. And you will crumble beneath it.”

Then she struck the trebuchet’s lever with a swift kick, and watched the rage deepen on Corypheus’ face as the payload sailed and struck the near mountainside. The valley frothed with falling snow, and she ran; up ahead, she could see the boarded up entrance to one of the tunnels Solas had described— _dirtha’vhen’an,_ she’d promised—and she sprinted for it, despite the aching in her hand and the sharp pain in her thigh where the arrowhead dug ever deeper into her flesh.

But before she could reach it, the ground buckled beneath her; she could not say whether the snow had lifted her or the ground had given way beneath it but she was tossed, thrown amongst the crumbling debris and bent trees, and into blackness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Dirth’vhen’an | A promise, an unbreakable vow. Lit. “the heart of speech.”  
> San | Okay  
> Dar’atisha | Go in peace.
> 
> Credit for the Elvhen goes to fenxshiral, as usual.
> 
>  
> 
> Author’s Notes: I am not super pleased to have included a lot of canon dialogue here; that is not really the direction I want to take this fic in. But to be perfectly honest I desperately wanted to write both that dancing scene and all the fighting scenes and I didn’t really see a way around including some canon dialogue given the cirumstances. I attempted to embellish where I could.  We will return to our regularly scheduled programing of Wolves and Other Weird Shit next update, I promise.


	10. Rise, Servant of June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the path up the mountain, attempting to reconnect with the Inquisition, Thanduwen Lavellan sees something familiar—and then, something not.

With a start, she came back to consciousness. Her breath hung as a misty wisp in the air; it was very, very cold.

There was no chance she had fallen asleep in these conditions. The hearth must have gone out in the night, she thought, curling around herself. But even that gentle motion was enough to send such pain flashing through her body that all she could do was still herself, sucking in her breath sharply.

It was then that she realized she had not fallen asleep at all. She was not in bed; the ground beneath her was hard, and freezing to the touch. Beneath her head, it was sticky. Gingerly, she raised herself into a sitting position, but as she moved the world lurched around her, spinning.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and breathed deeply, counting to five.

_Sa. Ta. Tan, Ny, Va._

When she opened her eyes again, she cast them downwards. She focussed on her breathing, trying to push out the pain with the feeling of her lungs expanding and contracting; she raised a hand to her head, pressing gingerly at the space behind her ear. After a few moments of probing, she winced; a gentle prod of her fingers had been met with sharp, fresh pain. When she looked at her gloved fingertips, they were coated in blood, half-congealed. 

That explained the dizziness, at least. She had fallen, and if the aching in her body was to be believed, from some great height, at that. Gently, she craned her neck back, looking upwards. Surely that had been the way she had come, but now, whatever hole she had fallen through was blocked with snow and debris. She was lucky the lot of it had not collapsed on top of her as she lay there, passed out in the dark. In the dim light of the cavern she found herself in, she squinted. Then, with a sinking sensation, she recognized the wheel of one of the trebuchets, splintered on the ground beside her.

It all came back to her suddenly, and with perfect clarity. She remembered the ground strewn with the bodies of slain Templars, the roar of the dragon overhead, the smell of burning. She remembered the ground crumbling beneath her and the Elder One being swept away by his dragon as she was swallowed up by the earth. 

For all her sprinting, her promise to Solas, _dirtha’vhen’an,_ and despite her attempt to run clear of the wreckage caused by the final swing of the trebuchet, she had expected to be dead. She wasn’t—not yet—but neither was she safe. Here, wherever she was—in the tunnels that Solas had described, she suspected—it was cold, and she did not trust the tunnels to hold for long. She was not dead yet, but if she did not move soon, she doubted she’d live out the night. If she did not do something, the cold would kill her, long before she had a chance to bleed out or starve. 

There looked to be only one way forward. At her front was a tunnel, man-made, stones laid in the same style that much of Haven’s Chantry had been. Perhaps she was beneath it. There was no telling whether the path would lead her outside or simply terminate in another cavern, but there was only one way to find out. Her bones ached. She was dizzy. But she had to move.

Slowly, carefully, so as not to push herself too far (the last thing she wanted was to fall on her face trying to get up too quickly) she raised herself to her feet. 

Her left leg exploded with pain. She gritted her teeth, hissing, as she felt something (blood, probably) ooze out of the wound at her thigh, where the Red Templar’s arrow was still protruding from her leg. She was sorely tempted to wrench the thing out, but especially with her fall, she knew better than to risk it. Miraculously, at her waist, she still had one of Adaan’s potions left; she pulled the cork out with her teeth and chugged the red liquid to fortify herself. 

Then she put one foot in front of the other.

Her pace was slow to start. She wanted to give her muscles a chance to wake up, the soreness lessening a little with every stride. She also thought it best to be cautious; she had no way of knowing just how nasty her head wound was, or quite how much blood she’d lost.

Past the archway, the tunnel was rough-hewn. From up ahead, she would have sworn she could hear the sound of wind, but it could very well have been a trick of the space, the way her footsteps and her breath echoed through it. She wandered along the path. For what she could make out in the dim, the tunnel ran in one direction only; she supposed it was possible that other passageways had been closed off, collapsing over time, but she did not think so. The thought gave her hope. If there was only one way forward, it seemed more likely the path would end in an exit, rather than a dead end. 

Of course, if it was a dead end, that meant there was no where else to go. But she did not allow herself to dwell on that thought for long. _Dirtha’vhen’an:_ she had made an oath.

It was quiet, except for that ominous howling, and the faint dripping of the icicles that descended, sharp and thick, from the ceiling. Her footsteps, no matter how faint they were, echoed.

When she caught sight of the first wooden posts ahead, her heart nearly skipped a beat. They were nothing special to look at, but they were reinforcing the ceiling and the walls, likely the work of Leliana’s scouts. Any evidence that this tunnel had once been in use was a good sign; she doubted they would have gone through the trouble of reinforcing it unless it led _somewhere_. As she continued along the passage, more and more such reinforcements appeared, until, underfoot, the sound of her footsteps changed. She looked down, surprised, only to find she was stepping on wooden planks, no longer the uneven and slippery surface of the tunnel’s floor. 

But when she looked up from the planks, she was greeted with a sight far more welcome.

Up ahead, the tunnel widened into a chamber. Across it, directly opposite where she stood, was an exit. She could see the snow outside, the wind whipping it into a white frenzy, but even that maelstrom was not enough to lessen the relief she felt.

“ _Mythal en’an’sal_ ,” she whispered, sucking in her breath. She took a few steps forward, but as she approached the chamber she discovered she was not alone: pressing through the Veil (thin from so much history and spilt blood) came four demon spirits.

The blessing had barely left her lips and already she was cursing, again. Her muscles ached, and it had been a tremendous effort just to make it this far down the tunnel, but she’d be damned if she let that stop her now. Exhausted as she was, what were a few more wisps, standing between her and her way out?

She moved to draw her staff out of its holster, but when her fingers wrapped around the grip and pulled, it was immediately evident something was wrong. The staff did not have the weight it should. She pulled it around in front of her to get a better look at it; to her horror, she realized that (perhaps in the fall) the staff had splintered in two. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have tried to cast a few spells anyway, even without the aid of a focusing tool like a staff. But she was injured, and weak; it would be impossible for her to summon the mana necessary to fight the demons without risking further injury and exhaustion.

She looked back up at the demons.

She’d just have to make a run for it, then.

But _running_ was quite outside the realm of possibility for her broken body. When she willed herself into moving, her gait was a hobbled, limping stride, faster than she had been moving before but not nearly fast enough to dodge the stray spirit magic that the wisps flung in her direction.

And there were more than just wisps. There were two other demons, as well, of a kind she had not seen before, shrouded in a robes, hovering just above the ground. They gave a terrifying shriek in tandem. One of them spun, and instead of spirit magic, she felt her chest struck with a blast of frost. It seized the breath in her lungs and had her stumbling, coughing. She hit the ground before she was aware of how badly she’d been reeling.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other one preparing to deliver a second blow. Her right hand was still grasping the broken staff; she raised her left arm in front of her face, to shield herself from the incoming attack, for whatever good it would do.

With a sound somewhere between a pop and a roar, her hand shuddered, the anchor bursting with vibrant, violent green light; above her, it was as though a rift had opened. She cowered, shielding her face with her limbs. She dared not look, but as she listened, she could tell something was different. The initial sound that had accompanied the rifts appearance had not abated; indeed, the roar seemed to swell. One of the demons let out another shriek, and her curiosity won out. She lowered her hands from her face.

Whatever it was that had opened above her—rift or otherwise—it was not spilling demons outward, but doing precisely the opposite. She saw the wisps, frozen where they hung, tiny particles of green light being pulled away from them until they disintegrated into a cloud of energy, all of it sucked into the rift above her. The shrouded demons were putting up more of a fight. One was screaming, the pointed claws of its blue hands digging into a nearby stone, scratching so hard they sent sparks—of energy, of magic?—flying outward from the friction. But the grip was not enough against the pull of the rift above. With one final shriek, the demon was swept into its gaping mouth, and then, with a neat little _pop_ , the rift collapsed into itself and vanished.

For a moment, all she could do was sit there, flat on her ass, breathing heavily, her eyes wide with confusion, staring dumbly at the spot in the air where the rift had appeared. Then, she turned her eyes to the mark. There was nothing at all visibly different about it. It did not glow brighter, did not sting any more or less than it had for the five months she had borne it. But something was, inarguably, different; she’d never been able to do anything like that with it before.

She thought of the Elder One, and the orb he carried. In the cold dark, she remembered Solas’ words from so many months ago, how he had cautioned her that whatever artifact had created the Breach was still out in the world, likely in possession same person who had first wielded it to such destructive effect. And this Elder One—Corypheus, he had called himself—had clearly opened the Breach. He had admitted to it, practically bragged about it. It stood to reason that the orb he carried was what placed the mark on her hand. 

_I am here for the anchor. The process of removing it begins now._

But he hadn’t. Whatever he had tried to do to take the mark from her, it hadn’t worked; and it seemed, rather than weakening it or lessening her control over it, Corypheus had inadvertently made it more powerful.

She glanced once more at the exit. Without further ado, she hoisted herself up. She cast her splintered staff away. Dead weight. No use holding onto it, now; it would do her no good. 

So distracted had she been by the demons, she had not even noticed the torches flickering on the walls. They were not Veilfire, so it stood to reason that they had been lit recently. A quick glance around the room confirmed that, though the passage she had come through had no other paths branching off of it, this chamber connected to two other tunnels. Her heart leapt into her throat. Was this the way that Chancellor Roderick had led the others? If the torches were not yet extinguished, perhaps she was not very far behind them. The thought filled her with renewed vigor. She stepped over the threshold of the cave and out into the blizzard.

 

The snow was powdery, and deep. Each step was a struggle, sinking further into the drift as the wind battered her. It was difficult to keep her eyes open without them tearing—and even then, the snow was so thick she could barely see more than a few feet in front of her. If Roderick and the others had passed this way, there was no way of knowing; their footsteps had long been snowed over. But she knew she did not have long to find the others. She was already worn from her fall and her journey through the tunnels, and she was not dressed for this weather. If she did not find them soon, she would end up spending the night on her own on the mountain—and she had little confidence that she would survive that.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of white. On a snow-swept mountainside, it should not have been out of place; she would have paid it no heed, had it not been moving against the wind. She turned, and what she saw surprised her less than the new behavior of the mark, less than the fact that she had woken up at all:

Standing there, looking straight at her, was the white wolf. It stood on top of the snow, walking along its surface without leaving so much as an imprint behind it. The wind hardly touched it; its fur moved gently with it, even as Thanduwen’s hair whipped about her face and fell in front of her eyes.

She wondered, briefly, if she was hallucinating. Too many times she had seen this creature. It could not be a coincidence; it must be pursuing her. But how on earth had it found her in the midst of the blizzard? Or perhaps she was really dead after all, her journey through the tunnels and her ordeal with the demons some trick of the Beyond. Perhaps she ought to speak to it. Who could say—if it was a hallucination, maybe it would talk back.

But before she could get the words out—before she could even decide what would be worth saying, shouting over the howling wind at this thing that was most certainly a hallucination, or else a wild animal that could smell her impending death on her and was simply waiting for the easy kill—the creature darted ahead. Only a few paces, and not past the point where she could not see it, and then it paused, looking at her. The gaze was pointed, intelligent.

Thanduwen brought her hand to her face, tightening a gloved fist around the seams of her hood, drawing it closer over her features. Then she followed.

After a few paces, the wolf lowered its head, raised its tail, standing beside an unfamiliar and unnatural shape in the landscape. Frowning, Thanduwen struggled to keep up with it. But when she came up beside it, she nearly whooped for joy. It was a wagon, abandoned on its side. One of its back wheels was elevated above the snowdrift, and carved on the oversized hub of the wagon wheel she could see clearly the all-seeing eye of the Maker, superimposed over the Blade of Mercy. This wagon had belonged to the Inquisition. She hurried her pace.

 

The wolf led her along the path of debris that the Inquisition must have left in its wake, burdens abandoned when the storm worsened. Truthfully, they’d done a terrible job of covering their tracks, not that Thanduwen could blame them. After what had happened in Haven, she understood why they might have been in such a hurry. In any case, the snow was still coming down hard; by the time the storm ended, all trace that they had ever passed this way would be erased until the thaw of spring, when the snowcaps melted.

Past discarded wagons, barrels and crates, the wolf led her. As they ascended up the mountain, it became less bare; trees stood here, swaying dramatically, their creaking the only thing audible above the wind. Beneath one of them, the wolf stood beside an old campfire. Thanduwen’s eyes widened, and she knelt beside it. Tentatively, she reached a gloved hand forward. The rocks ringing the pit were still warm, but not hot enough to burn. Fumbling in her eagerness, she opened the front of her leather armor, placing some of the rocks in her interior pockets. She’d be heavier this way—walking would be a bit more of a struggle—but at least she wouldn’t go numb so quickly. Her clan had used the same trick to keep the insides of their aravels warm at night, when the winters grew harsh.

She blessed Sylaise under her breath for the lingering warmth of the hearth, and trudged forward.

 

It was slow going. The wind was punishing. She had long lost feeling in her legs; her steps were clumsy. She stumbled. Often she fell, collapsing face first into the snow. When she had come outside, the wind had been blisteringly cold against her face; now, her cheeks were numb to it. The snow was crusting into a thin layer of ice on the front of her leather armor where the wind kept battering against her. Each time she fell, it was more difficult to rise again. 

The pine trees overhead swayed like reeds by a river. She thought of the blue sails of her clan’s aravels, and of her brother, many miles away. She thought of Solas, and the feeling of his lips pressing softly and adamantly against her hairline. _Dirtha’vhen’an._

 _Ir abelas,_ she thought, though it was as much for him as all of them: her brother, the Inquisition, the people of Haven who had passed away in the valley. Then she sunk to her knees in the snow and did not stir.

 

The sound of the trees creaking is like the footfalls of a stranger walking across the dust-covered floorboards of a long abandoned space; but she does not hear.

 

“Get up.”

But she could not. Drifting in and out of consciousness, all she could do was lay where she had fallen, curled around herself and sinking deeper and deeper into the falling snow. Her whole body was trembling. Her hands felt swollen and clumsy. She could no longer feel even the pain of her wounds, not in her shoulder, nor her head where she’d struck it after her fall, nor her thigh, where the shaft of the Templar’s arrow still protruded. But then the voice was less gentle.

“ _Rosas, sul’anasha or’June._ ”

She barely had the strength left to move, but those words summoned an indignation deep within her, _I am a servant to no one._ Slowly she lifted her head, her trembling fingers fumbling as she pulled the hood back from her face.

An elf woman stood in the snow before her, the likes of which Thanduwen had never seen before. She wore a long green cloak, but when it was stirred by the wind, it flashed with many colors: the deep young green of spring, the grey of misty mornings, the gold of birch leaves in autumn and the close, deep emerald of pine woods. Beneath her cloak she wore leather armor fashioned like a blacksmith’s apron. Upon the apron was a design in thin lines of silver that glimmered in the faint light: a tree, tall and proud, and snared within its roots, a hammer and anvil. On her head she wore a coronet of the finest wrought silver; it was as if around her crown was set a ring of the elegant boughs of young trees. The vallaslin of June was marked in bold, green lines on her face.

“Ar ame eral,” Thanduwen moaned quietly to herself, bowing her head back into the shelter of her arms, shivering violently.

“You are not,” the figure responded. Her tone was terse. “But if you do not move soon, you will enter the eternal dream and not wake again.” The wind was howling around them, but the woman’s words rang clear above it.

Thanduwen looked at the elf once more. Through the fog of exhaustion, she was reminded, for a moment, of Solas. Of the countless hours they had spent talking, remembering. The myths he’d killed and the gentle corrections he’d made to her understanding of the old ways, that ancient lore. He had said nothing of anyone named Tanaleth. But it comforted her, now, to think of him, to think of this vision in relation to him. This woman seemed as though she had leapt right out of the stories he’d tell her, visions from the fade, echoes of a time long past, eclipsed. “Who are you?”

The elf woman grinned, but her face was sad. “A memory. In life I was called Tanaleth of Halamshiral, and I was the High Keeper of June.” Then she knelt, bending down closer to Thanduwen. She reached out and took Thanduwen’s chin in her hand, forcing her to look into her face; her hands were heavily callused, and her thumb roughly stroked the lines of June’s vallaslin on her cheeks. There was no kindness in her eyes, only firmness, when she spoke again. “You cannot give in now. There is much work yet to be done.”

“I have done what I set out to do,” Thanduwen replied, shouting to be heard over the wind. “The Breach is sealed.”

“You have done nothing,” Tanaleth practically sneered, her face transformed instantly into an expression of derision. “The Elder One is just the beginning. He will be but a footnote in the tale of your deeds when you are done. We are very far, yet, from the hour of your ending.” Then she stood, extending her hand. “Take my hand, child of June. And I will take up the mountain you to your people.”

Thanduwen looked up at her again, her eyes squinting in the snow. She was freezing and weak, but that did not stop her from skepticism. _Child of June_ , the figure had called her, but what had June ever done for her or her people? For all the long years since the fall of the Dales her people had believed that their Creators had abandoned them. Could it really be possible that Tanaleth was not just a figment of her failing mind but an emissary of the God of Craft? She could not fathom what deed she had done to deserve such divine intervention on her behalf. She remembered the shrine behind her cabin at Haven—ashes, now. Colored bits of ore scattered and buried in the snow. How she had tended to it: less frequently than she would have liked, but with great care. It seemed like an age ago, but just the day before she had knelt before it, speaking the familiar invocations and prayers. _Child of June_. Had he sent this woman to protect her?

It seemed far more simple to believe that the vision in front of her was a product of her fading strength, her imagination concocting desperate images to force her out of her inertia and back into action and not, in fact, her patron God coming to save her. But could it be something even more sinister? The Veil was thin here, so close where the Breach once gaped, and she had been told that demons sometimes made mischief this way, by taking on fair guises. 

She was torn, though she felt foolish for it. Everyone in the Inquisition had been so eager to believe that Andraste herself had rescued Thanduwen from the Fade; why was it so difficult for her to believe that somehow, by some miracle, one of her own Gods had sent this spirit from across the many centuries since the fall of the Dales to help her, now?

If she could not put her faith in her own Gods, what could she believe in?

She reached for Tanaleth’s hand.

Tanaleth seized her arm in a firm grip and pulled her up with surprising strength, setting her on her feet. When Thanduwen looked into her face, she was smiling with approval. Then she turned away, and cried into the wind, “ _Eirmis_!”

At the sound of her call, something moved in the snow. Thanduwen’s eyes strained against the wind and thick flakes. Something large and white was making its way towards them. As it came into view, Thanduwen inhaled sharply. It was clearly a halla, unlike any halla that she had seen in her lifetime. It was far taller—more akin to a hart in size—but unmistakably by its deer-like face and spiraling horns. And yet in the place of the twinned horns that the herd of her clan grew, this halla had many, spiraling outwards into a constellated pattern around his head.

The halla whickered gently, prancing through the snow to Tanaleth’s side. “He’s very handsome,” was all Thanduwen could utter in response, too stunned by the majesty and grace of the creature to say anything intelligent. As she approached the steed, she reached out to tentatively stroke its flank.

“He is as handsome as he is strong. Eirmis will bear us through the snow, to the summit of the mountain. Up you go,” Tanaleth ordered, giving Thanduwen little time to admire the beauty of the creature before hoisting her up on to the halla’s back. With an impossibly spry leap, she mounted behind Thanduwen. 

It was… impossible. Beneath her, the halla felt real. Tanaleth’s arms, circled around her waist to keep her steady on the Eirmis’ back as he began to pick his way through the snow up the mountain, _felt real._ She was at a loss to say whether what was happening to her had any basis in reality, or whether it was just the product of her own impending doom, a vision come to carry her off into the Beyond as the life left her body. But the thoughts did not trouble Thanduwen for long; she was far too tired to puzzle out what was happening to her, too willing to give in to the sense of safety and relief she felt. Soon, the rhythm of the halla’s steps and the warmth of Tanaleth’s body behind hers lulled her back into a fitful sleep.

 

The wind howled with a fearsome voice, like the lamentations and vengeful promises of a God. Above, invisible through the torrential whirl of ice and snow, the stars traced their paths across an indifferent sky. There was no moon.

 

A hand was gently shaking her shoulder. Thanduwen awoke with a groan.

“Mith’ar’an mar’vhen,” Tanaleth whispered behind her. “You must go the rest of the way on foot.”

The elf slid neatly off the halla’s back, and turned to Thanduwen, extending her arms to help her ease off of Eirmis’ back. Too stupefied and groggy to put up much resistance, Thanduwen took her hands. Gingerly, she lifted her leg over the halla’s back and dismounted with a hiss; even with Tanaleth’s support, the shock of the hard ground beneath her was enough to send a fresh wave of pain rippling through her body.

She looked around her. They must have climbed to some impossible height. She could see the storm still raging  somewhere low and distant on the mountainside, but up here, flakes drifted in lazy, gentle spirals. They were not far from the summit. Just ahead, she could see a cleft between two tall pillars of rock. The mountain seemed to climb no further beyond it.

Tanaleth nodded in the direction of the cleft. “In the days before Arlathan fell, the Elvhen called this place Vir Vian,” Tanaleth said, hoisting herself back onto Eirmis. “Your people are that way.” With a chirping sound of command, she turned Eirmis around, guiding him back down the mountain.

“Wait!” Thanduwen called after her. Tanaleth paused, turning to face her once more.

“I don’t understand,” Thanduwen said, lamely. “Where did you come from? How did you know where I was? Before you… appeared to me, there was a creature. A white wolf. Is that how you knew how to find me? I have seen that animal before.”

Tanaleth raised an eyebrow appraisingly. “The _fen’telban_ is not the only wolf to have caught your scent, Child of June; it is not the one you should fear. You must be careful where you place your trust. Among your people are those who would seek to betray you, and they are patient. They will wait to deliver the blow until their arm is strongest. I wish I could give you the wisdom to know them, but there is much that is unclear to me, and I fear to say more should my poor guesses misguide you.”

She made a move to guide the halla away again, then paused. Her expression shifted into something impossible to read: pitying, perhaps, but kind. “You are stronger than you know, Thanduwen, Daughter of Soufei. But you must find that strength soon. I fear things will only become more difficult from this moment forward, and I will not always be there to help you. ” 

She leaned forward, reaching down to place her hand gently on the crown of her head. Thanduwen closed her eyes. 

“ _Tuelanhn ama na sule tael tasala_.”

But when Thanduwen looked up once more, neither the rider nor the steed were anywhere to be seen. She recoiled with a start, whipping her head around for any sign of them. There was none. Even the snow, in which the halla had just stood, was unblemished before her. Behind her, leading down the mountainside, was but one set of footprints: her own, not that of a four-legged steed.

She shuddered, and wrapped her arms about her body. She would contemplate the disappearance later.

She turned her eyes back to the cleft in the mountains. Even simply standing still, her body ached; but aching was better than being numb, and the cleft—what Tanaleth had called the _Vir Vian—_ was near _._ Another thing struck her, then. Tanaleth, whether a spirit or some magic or a hallucination brought on by her own imagination, had used the word _mar’vhen:_ Your People. She had always thought her people to be the Dalish, her Clan camping along the glens and beaches of a distant coast. But something about that had felt right. _Mar’vhen._ Her people: Solas and Cassandra and even Roderick, and all the others. For better or for worse, the Inquisition was now “her people,” just as Clan Lavellan had been for so long. 

When she had sunk into the snow, thinking of the blue sails of her Clan’s aravels, she had thought she would never see any of them again. She might, yet. But first, she would have to return to the Inquisition.

Wincing at the effort, she took a step forward. 

Her foot broke the icy skin of the snow and she sunk ’til she was knee deep; she took another step. In the absence of the storm, the sound of each footfall, and the crunching of the snow beneath, was eerily loud. She trudged onwards. Upwards. She slipped, but never fell; she caught herself, righted herself. Past the last of the trees. Onwards, onwards, ever forward. She knew, somewhere within her, deep seated, that whatever Tanaleth had really been, there was truth to her words: she could feel it, a belief somewhere inside of her, that just beyond the gape in the rocks remained those who had escaped Haven before it was reduced to rubble and cinder. There was nothing to do but move towards them, no matter how her joints cracked in protest. Something in her body wailing for rest but _almost, not yet._

Still her breath caught in her throat as she moved closer to the Vir Vian, the anticipation heavy as chainmail upon her as she got close enough to peek around the face of stone—

A fire blazed, hot and bright at the center of the clearing, surrounded by tents and wagons and broncos and the bodies of her people, deathly quiet and grim but _alive_ , and so many of them it was staggering, and Mother Giselle’s silhouette, and Cullen seated and clasping the back of his neck as he did when he was nervous, Leliana pacing, and there— _ah!_ —seated on top of a boulder and swaddled in blankets so that she almost did not recognize him she saw him, Solas, and none the worse for wear, _safe_ ; she had kept her promise to him, _dirtha’vhen’an,_ and at the fulfillment of that oath she felt her knees go slack beneath her and she fell to the snow, finally giving way to the exhaustion within her.

Cullen’s voice. “There it’s her!” Then darkness closed over her vision.

 

Some hours later Thanduwen awoke, warm and dry, a blanket drawn over her body. She blinked her eyes, adjusting; then, emerging from the mingled shapes of darkness and light, _his_ face emerged, touched dramatically by the light of the fire whose warmth she felt even here, several feet away. 

“Oh,” she croaked, her voice hoarse but her tone undeniably pleased, a smile breaking across her face. “Hello.”

“On dhea’lam, lethallin,” Solas said, peering down at her. He was seated beside her cot, his legs folded on the chair beneath him, his hands folded in his lap. His gaze was warm; he looked relieved to see her awake, and proud. “I removed the arrow shaft from your leg, and bandaged it. I also attended to your shoulder.”

“Making a habit of watching me sleep, are you?” Thanduwen half-mumbled, her eyes twinkling mischievously.

Solas chuckled. “Once we found shelter and made camp for the night, there were many among us who required medical attention. When you appeared a few hours ago, the healers were still busy mending the wounds of others. I saw to you myself, so that you need not wait for them to conclude their other duties.” His hands fidgeted for a moment in his lap before he stilled them, as if he were fighting the urge to reach out for her. Quietly, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Very broken,” she replied, wincing as she tried to raise herself on the cot. “But also very much not dead.”

“No, don’t,” he said, quiet but firm; losing the battle with his hands, he reached out and placed one on her shoulder to still her. “You should rest, yet.” Then he paused. He returned his hands to his lap and his eyes followed, and he distracted himself, picking bits of dried blood (impossible to say whether it was his or another’s) out from beneath his fingernails as he spoke again. “I was…” he began, searching for he words, “very much relieved, when we discovered you had escaped. I didn’t… _approve,_ of….”

Her smile widened despite herself. It was rare for Solas to be so inarticulate. It warmed her to see him this way—it was clear that their reunion, after the destruction of Haven, was emotionally potent enough that he could barely put it to words—but she did not want him to suffer under that weight. She knew his relief because it was hers, too. Before he could go on with his meandering tongue she slipped her right hand from beneath his blankets and placed it over the back of his, squeezing it gently. “I’m glad you made it out too, Solas.”

He stilled instantly, but his eyes remained downturned, gazing at hers where it had come to rest over his. He brought his other hand on top of it, his fingertips brushing gently along the back of hers, tracing calluses and the small cuts—freshly closed—from the battle with the Templars. He exhaled gently, then visibly swallowed. His middle finger wandered in a lazy spiral along her knuckles.

“It would have been difficult, for me,” he said quietly, without looking at her. “To lose you.”

“You haven’t,” Thanduwen replied, smiling up at him, dipping her head down closer to his thigh to peer up into his face, searching for his eyes. “You won’t. ’M not going anywhere.” Half-whispered and thick with the pleasure that the words brought her. Something inside her chest felt swollen and _full_ , the surreal and airy feeling of such utter joy after such despair. If she hadn’t needed it so badly (a tiny warm space of joy, to take refuge from the sorrow: the burned buildings and fallen bodies) it might have even struck her has inappropriate. Solas had been important to her from the beginning, and even if she always suspected or assumed that their friendship was equally as important to him as it was to her, it was still undeniably satisfying to hear him say those things aloud.

His eyes met hers, his look sly. “Not rushing off back to your Clan, now that the Breach is sealed?”

She blinked in quick succession a few times before she answered; in that moment, his finger stopped tracing patterns on her hand just to look at her. He was being playful, she knew that. But it was also true that he spoke of a desire that she’d had since all of this began, one that she had not hesitated to voice to him on more than one occasion. She had always hoped—naively, perhaps—that with the Breach sealed, she would be able to go back home. But after the attack on Haven, she knew she could not leave. It would be a long time, yet, before she could return to the Free Marches, if that time ever came. And a part of her recognized, for the first time, that the time may never come for her to go back.

“No,” she replied quietly, “not yet.” Then she frowned. Going home had been the only plan she’d ever had, even if it had been far-fetched and only half-believed in. Resigned to remain, she had not the faintest clue of what she would do next. “Though I confess,” she began slowly, “if I am not to return to the Free Marches, I do not know where to go next.”  She turned her gaze across the clearing where Cullen and Leliana where arguing quietly with each other; though she could not hear their words, their body language told her the disagreement was serious. “Do they even know where we are?”

“They are uncertain about our specific location. To them, we are simply taking shelter in a small pass through the mountains. If there was once a name for this place it is long lost,” Solas said. “In dreams, I have heard it called the _Vir Vian_.”

Thanduwen looked at him, her expression curious. “What did you say?”

“Vir Vian,” he said, turning to her with a smile. “The Opened Path. In the older days, before the fall of the Elvhen, this pass through the mountains was far more heavily trafficked. I confess to knowing little about it myself, beyond its name.” 

The words– _vir vian_ – stirred something in her. It came to her like a dream nearly forgotten upon waking: a faint image in her mind, soft around the edges. ( _The faint light of evening playing on the silver branches of the coronet around her head; the delicate lines of the silver hammer on her apron._ ) A woman claiming to be the High Keeper of June, with her raiment so fair it was difficult to believe she had been anything but a vision, so tall and proud. But the soreness in her thighs and her waist from riding Eirmis bareback up the uneven path of the mountain’s side… that, she thought, was no dream.

She could not look at Solas. Her brows knit, her expression troubled. “I…” she began, weakly. But what was she to tell him? How could she explain to him what she had (or had not) seen? She had never once spoken of the White Wolf that had followed her across the Hinterlands and back to Haven, the wolf which had found her first on the mountainside.

But she trusted him above all others. If she could not reveal the truth of her journey up the mountain to him, to whom else could she confess? “When I was on the mountain, I _saw_ something. Or I thought I did.” She spoke these words quietly, and her fingers closed tighter around his hand.

Solas tilted his head inquisitively. His fingers continued to trace intricate loops around her knuckles in an attempt to soothe. “What did you see? Or perceive that you saw?” he asked, his tone patient and curious.

Thanduwen’s mouth hung open, her lips just parted as she struggled with the words, trying to find a way to put what she had seen into words without looking mad. “I was injured,” she said, quietly. “If you healed me, you know how badly. On my way up the mountain I… fell. Rested, for a time, I think. I thought I would perish. When I awoke, I wasn’t alone. There was an elf there.”

Solas’ fingertips had slowed to a stop on the back of her hand. His gaze was intense; his attention was focused on her, undivided. For some reason, it made her nervous. “An elf?” he repeated, a practiced curiosity in his tone.

“Or it looked like an one,” Thanduwen continued. “And though she wore the vallaslin, I do not think she was Dalish. But Solas, I could _touch_ her, as you are touching me now. And if she hadn’t helped me, I don’t know if I would have made it up the mountain.”

Solas’ eyes narrowed. It was like a cloud moving before the sun, the way his expression changed. She could still make out the concern and curiosity on his face but beneath it was cloaked something other, different; she did not like it. It was hard and unfriendly, the scar at his brow deepening with the way his features folded. She felt something twisting in her stomach; it surprised her to realize, in that moment, that she wished she had not said anything at all.

“This elf, that you saw,” he began, and his voice was still quiet, but something was strained in the curious nature of his tone. He leaned a little closer to her on the cot. “Did she tell you her name?”

And then Thanduwen saw it as if she was seeing it for the first time; as he leaned, out from the folds of his tunic fell the necklace he always wore, the blackened jawbone of some long dead animal, _some wolf._ She remembered Tanaleth’s warning:

_The fen’telban is not the only wolf to have caught your scent, Child of June._

The thought was so absurd she nearly laughed aloud at it. the idea that Solas could be dangerous to her was as tragic as it was amusing. He was _unquestionably_ dangerous: holding his hand, the kiss he’d pressed to her brow at the trebuchet, the infatuation she had felt the moment she’d met him (only deepening with time and familiarity) was dangerous. It was always dangerous, falling in love. This she knew. And already, if she was truthful with herself, it was almost too late to escape that particular peril.

But among all the people she had met since she had joined the Inquisition, it was Solas—only Solas—that she trusted, fully and without reservation. If she could not be honest with him, she could be honest with no one; and to be honest with no one would be a very lonely, very sad fate to resign herself to.

She had lied to him only once before. She would not do it again.

“She called herself Tanaleth of Halamshiral,” she responded, looking up at him as he leaned over to speak to her, their voices soft whispers.

At once, Solas relaxed; he settled further back on his chair, his eyes flickering back to their tangled hands in his lap. But his expression was still troubled, his gaze distant, as if looking through and past (not _at_ ) their coupled hands.

“You look worried,” Thanduwen said.

Solas seemed hesitant to speak; when he did, his voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper. “The orb that Corypheus carries—it is Elvhen in origin. For a long time, I have believed this to be the case, but lacked the proof; now I am certain.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he spoke, his gaze flickering occasionally to the scene around them, scanning for anyone who might overhear. “I have hesitated to say anything to the others for… obvious reasons. It would only implicate you further in the death of the Divine if they learned the instrument of her death was of our people.”

“How fitting,” Thanduwen scoffed. “A Tevinter Magister seeks to destroy the world with ancient magic that once belonged to the elves. That’s very unoriginal, for someone who claims to be a God.”

“The power of it, left untouched for ages, should have destroyed him. _That,_ I think, would have been more fitting,” Solas responded, and the corners of his mouth twitched in something that was almost, but not quite, a smile. Something bitter in it. “But regardless of how he came upon it, we must remain above suspicion. It… concerns me, to hear that you have been visited by someone who may have known of this artifact, or helped to place it in his possession, wittingly or unwittingly.”

“She helped me up the mountain,” Thanduwen replied, quietly. “She reminded me of you, and the stories you tell me. The past we’re both fighting for, even if we don’t agree sometimes. Do you really think she was dangerous?”

“I cannot say, da’len, without knowing more.” Solas paused, his fingers hesitating; the he lifted his hand from atop hers, reaching to push a strand of hair out of her face, his touch feather-light. “You will tell me, won’t you, if you see this elf again?”

“Of course,” she said, and she meant it. If there was a time where she felt comfortable deceiving him, it was past, now. 

She felt different, transformed, _new._ Something about the destruction of Haven seemed to have shocked her into a new understanding of the journey she was on, her place in the Inquisition and where it would lead her. Having nearly lost so much, she knew now how deeply she valued what she had, and what she sought to do with the time that was given to her. 

But there was still the matter of what came next. “What are we going to do, Solas?” she asked, quietly, her voice for the first time crestfallen. “Where are we to go? There’s so many of us. We won’t last long like this in the mountains. And I can’t imagine Cullen brought much in the way of provisions on the way out.”

“No,” Solas said dryly; in his tone, she could hear the suppressed chuckle of derision. “If today was any indication, it would appear that _foresight_ is not his strongest suit.” Then he turned to her, smiling, and it was reassuring. “But fear not. For while you have slept, I have been deep in thought, and I believe I have a plan. Though I think we shall discuss it later, among less ears. Mother Giselle asked me to fetch her when you woke. I believe she has something she wishes to discuss with you.”

He rose to leave her; she reached out and grasped her hand tightly in hers. “Dont go. Not yet.”

“San.” He sat back down.

He did not let go of her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are interested, I wrote a short piece describing the events of this chapter from Solas' POV, available here: [The Vigil at Vir Vian](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11010249/chapters/24531333)
> 
> Translations:  
> Sa. Ta. Tan, Ny, Va. | One. Two. Three, Four, Five.  
> Dirtha’vhen’an | A promise, an unbreakable vow. Lit. “the heart of speech.”  
> Mythal en’an’sal | Mythal’s blessing.  
> Rosas, sul’anasha or’June. | Rise, servant of June.  
> Ar ame eral | I am dreaming.  
> Eirmis | Snowblade. The name of Tanaleth’s halla.  
> Mith’ar’an mar’vhen. | We are close to your people.  
> Vir Vian | The Open Path  
> fen’telban | lit. White wolf  
> Tuelanhn ama na sule tael tasala. | Creators protect you until we meet again.  
> On dhea’lam | Good evening.  
> San | Okay.
> 
> As usual, I relied heavily on fenxshiral's Project Elvhen (which I cannot recommend highly enough) for this chapter.


	11. The Lady of the Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before her was a massive tower the likes of which she had never seen before—nothing she had seen in Skyhold came close to it. It was slender, and it rose so high into the sky it pierced the clouds. The tower was made of a stone she had no name for: it was like a milky sort of crystal, or marble, and in the light of sunset it shimmered blood red. The entire tower was, to her eyes, seamless: an art beyond the hands of masons. It inspired in her simultaneous feelings of awe and terror. 
> 
> There were neither windows, nor doors.

_“Heroes of the Inquisition! As Inquisitor. I pledge that I will do my best to honor this faith you have placed in me. That this title has been bestowed to not only a Dalish elf, but a mage, is a clear sign of the changing times. In the eyes of the Orlesian Chantry, I’m hard pressed to say which is the greater sin, and that I have won your trust and faith despite my identity moves me, even as it troubles me. For I wish not to be an exception. I long for the day when it is neither unexpected nor unorthodox, that someone who is not human, nor Andrastian, can be seen as a leader if that person possesses a strength of character and exercises a fairness in judgement.”_

Thanduwen had known this was coming. She had confessed as much to Solas on one of those long days they’d spent in relative privacy, scouring the serrated peaks of the Frostbacks, scouting ahead of the Inquisition, seeking the fortress he’d seen in the Fade. “ _Bull thinks… we will need a leader after this. After all that singing…. it might be me_.” And he had heard the apprehension in her voice, and looked at her warmly, pride and kindness written on his face. “ _I don’t want it_ ,” she’d said. “ _And if you have no choice?_ ” he’d asked in response, in that golden tone he used when they talked of such things: morals, obligations, fate. “ _Perhaps you cannot refuse the title. But once it is yours, only you can say what it means. Lead them to something better._ ” She did not know if she could. She did not know if she was strong enough to wield the power that had been thrust upon her and not be corrupted by it. And when it came to the deployment of troops and the tightrope walk of diplomacy, she would still allow herself to fear it; but not when it came to words. From her early days as a child, enamored with story, to the hours spent pouring over old Dalish texts, words had always been useful to her, a tool she wielded readily.

_“To many of you, our arrival in Skyhold seems miraculous and ordained, proof that the Maker’s hand guides each of our actions. But is it any more miraculous than our escape from Haven, or our success in closing the Breach? Is it any more miraculous that we have overcome the odds that have always been against us, since the Chantry denounced us? Perhaps the Maker has revealed himself in these events, but not to me. For what I see when I look out at all of you is not the hand of the Maker but the sacrifice and dedication of every member of this Inquisition. Without the effort of all who have gathered here, we would have accomplished nothing, with or without the blessing of Maker and the nine Creators. This victory belongs to everyone; it did not come about by my actions alone. You have all demonstrated a sense of honor and duty that humbles me every day.”_

_“But that is not enough; we have more work to do still. Though we may feel safe within the heavy walls of this fortress, we cannot afford to rest.”_

Perhaps it had been inevitable; it certainly made her feel better to believe it had been. Inevitable since as Bull’s words on the way to the Breach, and Josephine’s thinly veiled hints about “the structure of the Inquisition.” Inevitable since Mother Giselle’s insistent words in the tent after Solas had left Thanduwen with the Chantry Mother, and the remains of the Inquisition holding their hands together in prayer and singing the Chant of Light to her in the Vir Vian, their voices lifted up and resounding in the mountains. Inevitable, perhaps, from the moment she had woken with the mark upon her hand. She had long anticipated this moment—feared it, dread it, wondered at it—but that anticipation still did not prepare her for the uproar that greeted her when the time came.

They had named her Inquisitor, and now she stood before a courtyard packed with upturned faces and rapturous cries. Cassandra had called it a holy war; perhaps it had not always been, but it felt that way, now. There was no denying it, no stopping it, the wheels already in motion, spinning madly. She had tried. But no matter how many times she had asserted she was not their Herald, Chosen One, Savior, they believed it. Those collected before her cheered with a religious fervor, a frenzy of faith. It terrified her, but there was no avoiding it now. There was only the indisputable fact of it, and what she would do about it. “ _And if you have no choice?_ ”

_“Though all present here have a right to be proud of what we have accomplished, special mention must be made of some of you. I speak now directly to the mages. When you joined our Inquisition, Ferelden had banished you; you had little choice but to follow us. And you had no reason to believe our promises that if you aided us, we would grant you the full freedom and respect that you deserve. Yet you made the long and arduous journey from the Hinterlands—some of you, from farther—to help us, an Inquisition tied inextricably to the Chantry, not by my hand nor by choice but by design. You fought for us. Some of your comrades have died for us. For that I am again humbled.”_

She had prepared for this moment since she’d awoken in the Vir Vian. She had kept Solas’ words— _only you can say what it means—_ and thought long and hard on what they meant, could mean. 

No matter what path she took, how careful she was, there was no guarantee she would not leave the world more divided and shattered than it had been before the Conclave. But she had to try. She would be damned if she did not try as best she could to change things while she had the power to do so, to pressure the right people in the right places. Months ago she had told Cullen that his world was not one she felt moved to save. Perhaps her greatest task was not to defeat Corypheus, but to make the world a little less cruel, a little less dark. A little more worthy of saving.

_“Skyhold sits on the border between the Orlesian Empire and the Kingdom of the Ferelden. An apt location; the Inquisition, too, sits now at a crossroads. Now is when we will decide what we truly stand for: what we will become. Now is the hour for the designing of the deeds for which we will be remembered.”_

(Tanaleth’s words on the path up the mountain: _The Elder One is just the beginning. He will be but a footnote in the tale of your deeds when you are done._ ) 

_“And so I take this opportunity to make a promise. Under my leadership, the Inquisition will continue to face the threat of Corypheus. By my life or my death, we will cast him back into the cursed Void that spat him out. But let that not be our only task.”_

_“It will be my chief goal, as Inquisitor, to restore balance to Thedas. I say balance, instead of peace; for while peace is a worthwhile goal, one might have described Kirkwall at peace before the Circle fell. Even as Dalish were hunted for sport in Orlais, one might have described that empire as at peace, before their Civil War. No, I speak not of peace, but of balance: that everyone—men, elves, dwarves; mages and nonmagical folk—will all have a voice, each with the freedom to live their life as they see fit so long as they do not bring harm to the lives of others. And until the Chantry is prepared to grant those rights to all, the Inquisition will stand to protect those whose rights the Chantry has denied for ages.”_

As she spoke, she could sense Cassandra’s discomfort beside her on the platform. The Seeker had been effusive in her praise; she had handed over authority over a movement she had started without reservation or regret. But it was fair, Thanduwen thought, to say that neither Cassandra nor Josephine had expected the torrent of words she would unleash once the proclamation was made. But speaking in front of a large group, tapping into their emotional current and redirecting it to something useful, meaningful—that, at least, was something she was comfortable with.

Below, Cullen’s face had transformed, his brows knit together; not quite a scowl, but his expression troubled. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leliana looking at her with something like fascination. Josephine held her writing tablet but she had stopped scribbling; her eyes had gone wide with shock. Terrified, Thanduwen supposed, about how she would have to spin this particular story so that it did not raise the ire of all the nobles and kingdoms the had supported them thus far.

Thanduwen did not care. She was prepared to make pledges that she could not retract. She was prepared to say things that would piss off the elite; too long, she thought, had they ruled without question, without adapting, without change. They had given this title to a Dalish Mage; it was best, she thought, to be upfront about what that was going to mean. 

_“I seek not to destroy the Chantry, but to mend it, though I do not know yet what that will look like. In the coming months I will be working closely with Grand Enchanter Fiona and factions of both the loyalist mages and the rebels to decide what the most safe and respectable course of action will be, not just for the mages but the people of Thedas; when a decision is made, we will implement it. We were formed in response to the destruction of the Conclave, but that does not mean we need cast aside the ideals that brought together the many who gathered there. We will lay the groundwork for a world in which Mages can live freely, and in which they need not be feared.”_

_“To this I pledge my life.”_

_“The Inquisition will stand for all of us, not just a few of us; where for centuries the Chantry has divided through conquest and dogma, we will unite. People of all nations will be welcome here if they come with an open mind and a willingness to  contribute.”_

_“As I stand before you, for the first time since the death of Divine Victoria, I feel a profound sense of hope. The Inquisition will lead Thedas. We will teach them with the courage and the valor of our hearts, the wisdom of our spirit. Through the righteous path of our deeds we will show the continent how mighty and formidable we are when we stand side by side, undivided by our race or class or what Gods we beseech in our hour of need.”_

Mother Giselle had overplayed her hand at the Vir Vian: she knew, now, the faith that they projected upon her, the myth they wanted her to be a part of. And though she did not in herself believe it, she knew the value in reflecting it back to them, as a mirror. How to distort that faith into something she could use. Try as she might, she could not cure them of their love for their Maker, or their believe that He acted through her. But she could redirect that love; she could repurpose it.

What she did, she knew, was, to some degree, _monstrous._ But they would say that of her anyway, she was sure. It was probable that in some corners of the continent they already were, whispered slander. Those who opposed her would seek to defame her, or diminish her. When the Chantry decided what this had all been about, when they wrote it down in their history books, they would call her a tyrant. But if through that monstrosity, through the forfeit of her own soul, her integrity, she could forge something beautiful and bright—the hope that Thedas could be redeemed—she would gladly make that bargain. Better to be a tyrant than a prop; better to be decried by the Chantry, she thought, than exalted by it.

_“This is a task too great for one person—I cannot do it alone. I am relying on each and everyone of you to carry this message in your hearts. And when we all feel the truth of it—when our unity resounds through the mountains like the ringing of trumpets—then, I believe, we will be unstoppable. We will honor the sacrifice of the brave souls who died in Haven that we might escape; we will not allow that sacrifice to be in vain.”_

_“Commander Cullen asks if you will follow, fight, triumph; know that I ask nothing of you that I am not willing to give myself. I will fight alongside you. I will triumph or die alongside you. Our blood is one blood.  Let the blade pass through the flesh! Let my blood touch the ground! Let my cries touch their hearts! Let mine be the last sacrifice!”_

For too long she had put to high a price on her self-respect. But she finally had something worth surrendering it to: the hope that, through this mutilation of herself, becoming something less that she wanted to be and more what they wanted her to be (never forgetting the distinction) she might make the world a tiny bit better for those who believed in her. She saw suddenly beyond the fog of grief that had fallen over her since all of this began. She had not wanted this, to be held aloft; but if she could not dissuade them from that, what could she do with that faith? How could she forge it into a tool?

_“And if we remember these bonds that unite us, we will usher in a new age in Thedas. Corypheus has sought to divide us, but by his deeds we will stand stronger and more united than we have been since the first Exalted March on the Dales! We will unite together as Andraste led the continent against the tyranny Tevinter, and we will smite this false prophet! I stand before you as Inquisitor and make this promise: from Corypheus’ ruin we will sow the seeds of a new age, where none have cause to fear their fellow man! The Inquisition is for all! Thedas is for all! Balance for all!”_

 

The throne room was silent, but through the massive doors, they could still hear the cheering and shouting of those still collected in the courtyard. There was the sound of many voices lifted together in laughter and song. An impromptu celebration had begun outside following the announcement. For the moment, the shuffling of crates and barrels, the tasks that had begun to get Skyhold defensible and comfortable, had come to a pause.

But not for the Inquisition’s leaders. Outside, they shouted her name, and hailed their Inquisitor, but inside, neither Josephine nor Cullen nor Leliana seemed to know what to make of the display they’d just witnessed. Leliana seemed to be taking it best of all of them, but it was difficult to tell: she was wearing that small smile she bore when she was hiding her thoughts, an old trick from her bard days. Every so often, she would look at Thanduwen with admiration, though Thanduwen could not say if it was because of what she had said, or merely the fact that she had the gall to say it. 

Cullen, by contrast, was far more transparent; she could tell he was agitated simply by the angle of his shoulders and the pace of his steps. His feet were heavy on the broken cobbles of the floor, and each step echoed through that vast space.

Thanduwen did not let it bother her, not now. She was far too absorbed with the sight in front of her. “ _Skyhold_ ,” Solas had called it, and she did not question how he knew its name. It was the fifteenth day of Firstfall when she had first laid eyes on it, and as her eyes took in the sight of the fortress front of her—perched on an outcropping of rock some several miles away—it had stolen her breath. She knew little of siege warfare or the commanding of armies, but upon first glance, the fortress had seemed to her so defendable, so safe. It was a surprise that it had laid unoccupied for so long. “ _Skyhold,_ ” he’d called it, after weeks of searching for it, and she’d been mute, speechless, stumbling lamely towards the sight in front of her. 

Josephine had informed her that this was the throne room. It was in bad need of repair, but it had good bones. When the debris was cleared, when curtains were hung, when the mosaics were repaired (expenses she knew were trivial, just as she knew Josephine would insist upon them, to keep up appearances) it would be a striking space, as beautiful as it as imposing. 

Thanduwen could see doors leading off to passages blocked by fallen rubble and debris; she was eager to have them cleared so she might discover where they led. Ahead, the far wall was tiled with extravagant colored glass that scattered brightly colored light like gems across the surface of the rubble-strewn floor. Several of the panes had fallen from their frames and lay, now, shattered on the floor; the windows were no less beautiful for it. And over everything—the fallen planks of wood, the cracked cobbles of the floor—a fine dust had settled. As Thanduwen walked the hall with her advisors, their footsteps stirred it, and it rose in gentle dirty clouds around their heels.

Finally Josephine cleared her throat, spoke up. “Though it is currently unoccupied, the preliminary reports suggest this castle has been in use for many ages. The architectural style—or, rather, the diverse array of styles—suggests it has changed hands many time throughout the Ages. It may have even been a sacred site for the ancient elves, before they were conquered by the Imperium.”

Thanduwen sensed the truth in those words, though as yet she could not pinpoint the stylistic flourishes that gave away the fact that this entire fortress was built on a foundation laid by her people. Perhaps it was her own anticipation, a sense of giddiness, but she could feel some charge, here. Something ancient. She already felt far more at home within the fortress than she ever had in Haven, that site of Andraste’s final resting place. Here was something cobbled together, built on foundations laid by the elves and paved over ten times since, but now, she would sit in its center.

Cullen was fidgeting behind her; she cold hear the clanking of his gauntlets resounding as he did. “If you have something to say, Commander, you may speak.” There was a playfulness in her tone, but a barb, there, too. For the first time, she clearly outranked him. Despite their past disagreements, from now on, he would report to her.

“The speech you gave,” he said slowly, cautiously. “If those are your aims, I cannot say I fully support them.”

“Well, Commander,” Thanduwen drawled, looking at the punctured stained glass at the end of the hall, “if you find it too great a conflict of interest, I am always prepared to accept your resignation, should you feel yourself incapable of carrying out your duties.”

Her words had somehow ratcheted up the tension in the room, but not in a way she expected. Cullen had been silenced by them. She turned and looked at him more carefully. His eyes had turned away from her, and there was something ugly on his face: anger, but not at her. His reaction suggested that a resignation was already on his mind, although he had never hinted as much to her before. (In all fairness, perhaps he had thought she would be far too eager to encourage such a resignation.) All the same, her suggestion had wounded him far more than she expected; she filed the thought away for later.

“It may have been a bit inflammatory,” Josephine interjected. “Certainly you have called out many of our closest allies. Orlais, the Chantry…”

“The Chantry was never our ally,” Leliana corrected, her stride easy as she walked forward to take a closer look at something ahead. “They merely tolerated us; they promised not to interfere. They would have remained decidedly neutral until all of this is over, and a new Divine is selected. But more the speech was more than inflammatory, I think; it was effective,” she said, turning her face to Thanduwen. “We can still hear theme cheering your name and drinking to your health in the courtyard. I did not know you were such a gifted orator, Inquisitor.”

“I had to lead many ceremonies as first,” Thanduwen responded, with a cautious smile. “I am no stranger to speaking in front of crowds.”

“You commanded their hearts in the courtyard,” Leliana said, raising an eyebrow. “It is a skill we could make much use of; though I might suggest, in the future, that you rely on your advisors to help you prepare a statement that will inspire a greater number and alienate fewer.”

“No,” Thanduwen replied firmly. “I want those who disagree to feel alienated. What will they have to disagree with? I have declared the Inquisition for all. That is the goal we will be working towards; if they disagree with that, they have no place here. I am in charge, now; a decision that you all made without consulting me, without asking me if I even wanted it, or what I might do with it. Now you know.”

“Indeed,” Leliana said, raising her eyebrow. “Though given how often you’ve denounced Andraste, I might not call your quoting of her Canticle honest, Inquisitor.”

It was a sly comment, not a quite a rebuke. She had known Josephine and Cullen would take her display badly; she had not been able to anticipate Leliana’s reaction, and being unable to read it now made her nervous.

But her words were not left to linger; there was too much to discuss. “So this is how it begins,” Cullen murmured, half sulking, kicking his boot against the ground and watching the way it stirred up the dust.

“It is long past begun, Commander,” Leliana replied. “But we have put off decisive action while we searched for a new home for the Inquisition; we can delay no longer. We must turn the Inquisitor’s promises into actions,” she said, passing a sly glance at Thanduwen and dipping her head ever so slightly in deference.

“But what do we do?” Josephine asked. “We know nothing about—”

But before she could finish the thought, Josephine froze. Thanduwen wondered, looking on strangely as she stood perfectly still. There was no trace of ice or frost on her limbs, but she appeared not to be moving a muscle; even the fabric of her dress had stopped its golden rustling, as if time itself had turned its eyes away from her.

“Ambassador?” Thanduwen asked, but Josephine did not stir. She turned to Leliana in alarm, only to find that Leliana and Cullen were just as still: Leliana with that appraising look on her face, and Cullen with his scar still twisted by the frown on his lips. 

And it was quiet—unnervingly so. Thanduwen turned her gaze to the great doors of the throne room, but outside, nothing moved. The sounds in the courtyard had been silenced. Silenced were the sounds of the Inquisition: orders shouted, blades on grindstones, repairs being made. 

There was nothing.

Something stirred behind her; in her peripheral vision, she caught the briefest flash of white, and turned towards it, just in time to catch one of the doors of the throne room clicking gently shut.

The door stood beside a great hearth. Mere moments ago it had been blocked by fallen rubble; even if she had been able to climb over it, she doubted she’d have been able to force it open. But now, the path before her was clear. Thanduwen watched the door cautiously, suspiciously. That flash of white… it enticed her. 

She knew she ought to stay behind. There was no telling whether or not some foul magic had befallen the advisors, and she owed it to them to help, though she hadn’t a clue how. But as she turned her gaze back to her advisors, she could have sworn she heard a noise behind the door, the patter of bare feet on paved stone.

With one last glance at her frozen advisors, she stepped quietly towards the door, careful to muffle the sound of her steps over the rubble. She ought to have felt frightened, but once her hand found the door’s knob she felt no hesitation, thrusting the door open to see what secrets it enclosed.

She was blinded by the blood red light of the setting sun; she held her hand over her eyes as the adjusted. 

But as she protected her eyes with her hands, she realized that wasn't quite right, couldn’t be. Firstly, there ought to have been more castle. She had seen the walls of the fortress, knew that beyond this door there must have been more rooms, even if they were crumbling. And should she (by some trick of perspective) have found herself staring at the sky, there were hours, yet, until sundown. 

When she lowered her hand to look around, she found herself at the mouth of a stone passageway. When she turned to peer behind her back into the throne room, she found that it was no longer there: in the place of the throne room there was a dimly lit staircase descending into darkness, deep into the base of the mountain. And before her…

Before her was a massive tower the likes of which she had never seen before—nothing she had seen in Skyhold came close to it. It was slender, and it rose so high into the sky it pierced the clouds. The tower was made of a stone she had no name for: it was like a milky sort of crystal, or marble, and in the light of sunset it shimmered blood red. The entire tower was, to her eyes, seamless: an art beyond the hands of masons. It inspired in her simultaneous feelings of awe and terror. 

There were neither windows, nor doors. 

But suddenly, from around the perimeter of the tower, she caught sight of a figure ascending the tower, draped in fine silks of the purest white. As she climbed the tower, the stairs slid neatly from the tower’s exterior wall, as if anticipating her steps, rising to meet her feet; behind her the treads of the stairs slid neatly back into the towers flesh without the slightest trace to suggest they had ever been there to begin with. Her step was fast and light over the treads—she had either made this climb frequently enough to have confidence in her steps, or she was privy to some secret magic of this place that made her confident she would not fall. 

As Thanduwen approached the tower, she kept her face turned upwards, watching the woman climb the tower above her. She would disappear around the corner, only to flash again around the other side, accompanied by the light pattering of her bare feet and the flash of the white silk of her dress which billowed behind her as she ascended, catching the breeze, rose-tinged in the light of the fading sun. 

When she reached the foot of the tower, Thanduwen paused. She did not know how to activate the stairs; she had not seen the woman begin her ascent. She had hoped—perhaps foolishly—that the tower would simply sense her presence and reveal the stairs to her. But as she stood before it, the tower was motionless; it’s surface remained smooth.

She placed the palm of her left hand on the milky surface; it flashed beneath her touch, illuminating briefly with a shuddering sort of light. It was warm. And it hummed, for a long time, as if indecisively. She was unwilling to tear her eyes from its surface as it rippled, but every so often she glanced overhead as the woman in white silk shrunk smaller and smaller, climbing farther above and away.

The anchor on Thanduwen’s left hand began to tingle. Then the tower _growled._

She could feel the strange stone shuddering beneath the touch of the anchor on her palm. In a sudden shiver the tower turned from red to brilliant green, and it glowed, luminescent in the dim light of evening. Suddenly, like the turning over of a thousand dragon scales, the surface of the tower transformed itself to reveal a set of two large doors, overlaid with a mosaic of green and gold. Silently, they opened before her. 

Thanduwen frowned. She had sought to pursue the lady up the stairs; she did not like the idea of stepping blindly into this tower, the doors shutting behind her, swallowing her up inside the tower’s windowless dark. But she could not go backwards, not now. She had stepped through the door in the throne room into something else, something other, and now she had no idea how to return to Skyhold, even if she had wanted to. 

She crossed the threshold.

The interior space was covered with elegant, iridescent mosaics that shone brilliantly, even in the dim light permitted to pass through the open arms of the door. They were tiled in the style that could still be seen in the ruins of ancient Elvhenan, but unlike many of those, she was unfamiliar with the story they told. Typically the mosaics were devotional, portraits of the Creators; these were different. They were more akin to the paintings she would see in the wilderness, pigment left on rock by passing Dalish clans of ancient wars and battles long lost.

She stepped further into the space to admire the round room that held them. She stepped into the room’s very center, atop a mosaic of something that looked like the orb Corypheus had carried—it bore the same pattern of whorls and spirals on its surface. As she did, the doors behind her shut, so smoothly and quietly she barely noticed until she was enveloped in darkness.

But the darkness lingered only briefly before there appeared a tiny light at her side, suspended, bouncing in the air. She had seen some of the Circle mages summon such creatures: tiny wisps, supposedly without much will of their own (something she would have contested) that spirit mages often summoned to light their way, or carry out the most basic of tasks. But this one simply hovered at her side, bobbing in the air, a curious nature about it.

Then there was that growling sound again—the spirit at her side made an excited trilling sound, somewhere between a bird call and a bell. The floor lurched underneath her. The feeling of it nearly brought her to her knees, unprepared as she was for the sudden movement. In the dim light cast from the wisp at her side, she could see the mosaics lowering, then falling away beneath her; she was rising. The mosaic beneath her was acting as some sort of lift.

She wondered why the woman she had followed had not used the lift, but then she remembered that the doors had appeared and yielded to her at the press of the anchor. Could that have been the key? 

The lift rose through the ceiling of the first chamber and entered into a narrow column, a shaft at the center of the tower. As she rose, slowly, Thanduwen could see many doors at different levels falling away beneath her. She wondered what secrets they might contain, but knew not how to safely stop the lift so she could enter through them. 

Onward and upward the lift ascended, until, finally, it came to rest. When it did, she stood before an archway, not a door. Just as the lift halted, she caught sight of the woman in white silks pass by, climbing higher.

Thanduwen stepped off the lift and walked hurriedly through the arched tunnel to the exterior of the tower; she turned her head just in time to catch a flicker of the silks passing round the corner of the tower. Below her, a thick blanket of clouds stretched forward. She could see nothing beneath it, but around her, puncturing the cloudline in majestic peaks of purple capped with snow, were the utmost heights of the mountains. She was very high indeed.

As she stood on the precipice of the tower’s edge, a platform extended before her feet; a step. She looked down at it apprehensively, though she felt slightly silly for that apprehension. She had not hesitated to pass through the doors; she had surrendered to the motion of the lift that had carried her so high up. But she could not shake the dread, the feeling that as soon as she left the security of the tower’s interior, the step would fall out from beneath her and she would be left to plummet to the ground.

She took a deep breath; there seemed little sense in stopping now. 

Still clinging to what feeble purchase she could find on the tunnel’s edge, she placed her foot on the stair, testing it. It did not give way beneath her weight. It felt secure. And as her flesh met the cool stone of the first tread, a second slid neatly out in front of her, leading further upwards along the outside perimeter of the tower. 

She closed her eyes, took another deep breath. In her short time in the Inquisition she’d already tread across many a precarious precipice or bridge, not to mention the days of her youth clambering through ravines and across fallen trees, simply for the pleasure of it. But never before had she been quite so _high_. 

Curiosity compelled her as much as necessity; she had come too far, now, to go back. (She supposed she might succeed in commanding the lift to bring her back to the ground, but then what would she do, with no sight of Skyhold to guide her?) So she set her foot on the step in front of her, and—hugging the smooth wall of the tower, and with less than half the grace she’d seen in the woman whose footsteps she followed—she began her ascent.

Thankfully, there was not far left to climb. After a few steps she could see arches above her ringing the summit of the tower; a few steps later she could hear voices. 

“You abandon your people in their hour of need, to cower in this tower with your trinkets and schemes.” It was a feminine voice, a rolling contralto—perhaps the woman she’d followed up the stairs? The tone was accusatory, but there was pain in the voice, too, as if the abandonment she spoke of was personal. No matter how the woman tried to cloud her grief with anger, it was still there, detectable beneath the surface. 

She wondered at that voice, wondered at the woman’s identity. But the next voice she heard was unmistakeable, and as soon as she heard it she froze where she stood on the steps, the fingers of her hand clutching a bit tighter, seeking purchase on the tower that they did not find. She felt desperately the need to steady herself at the sound—the distinctly male voice, with words spoken in a peculiar and poetic cadence. She _knew_ that voice. For how many months, nights, hours had she laid awake listening to it, recounting stories and visions, lost songs and old magicks? But where the woman’s voice had been passionate, this one was cold, empty of emotion—practically bored in comparison the woman’s passion.

“This is no mere trinket, Idrilla. It will end the war—perhaps, all wars. And those dogs that would call themselves Lords will suffer before it concludes, I promise you that. Justice will come to them.”

The voice twisting into something almost like a snarl in the end— _those dogs that would call themselves Lords_. But who was he talking about? Thanduwen quietly hastened up the last of the steps to the edge of the platform, peering over the tower’s edge.

The sight of him stole the breath from her lungs—shocked her into awareness, like the being submerged in a murky, dark lake, then piercing the still surface into a cool night filled with stars. The truth flashed brightly within her mind: she remembered; she was dreaming. Long years had passed since her arrival at Skyhold, her courtyard coronation. She felt the weight of the years upon her: new responsibilities and wounds. How long had she lingered here in this memory—this dream?

And he— _Solas_ —looked just as he had the last time she’d seen him. The sight of him hurt her terribly. Tall and regal, bronze lacquered armor strapped over fine chainmail, draped in luxuriant furs. Only the expression he wore was different, unfamiliar. At the crossroads, among the ruins of a long-lost empire, he’d been melancholy and full of regret. Here, his features were set into hard lines: dispassionate and cold.

Thanduwen wanted to confront him. She would stride up to him yelling ancient profanities, pounding her fists on that silly armor of his. And she might have; but when he turned his eyes to where she stood, there wasn’t the faintest trace of recognition in his features. His eyes went straight through her. She frowned, padded further up the steps; but even as she reached the platform above, neither Solas nor Idrilla—he had called her by that name—took any notice of her.

It seemed as though they could not see her at all.

Idrilla scoffed. “This is vengeance, Fen’Harel, not justice! You must know this as well as I do.”

Idrilla was pleading with him, and it was difficult to hear: Thanduwen could hear herself in those words, even if she’d never spoken them. But she recognized the tone: the hope and the futility. _Abandon this folly. Together we will find a better way._ But just like her own, Idrilla’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

Solas did not even look at her, but his eyes flashed with the same bright blue she’d seen at the crossroads, just before he’d turned the Viddasala to stone with no more than a glance. Instinctively, Thanduwen flinched, closing her eyes: but when she opened them, Idrilla still stood before her, her silks blowing lazily in the wind.

His eyes were still aglow. But instead of directing his gaze at Idrilla, he was focused on an object set atop a stone pedestal before him. He held his hands in the air on either side of it, cupping the space, his fingers dancing in subtle but precise movements: little twitches, nudges, flicks. Those gentle movements commanded several tiny pieces of green crystal and fragments of ore, dancing in the space between his hands, tracing lazy arcs across the space. With a small twist of his wrist and a curl of his fingers, they came together, interlocking like the pieces of a puzzle box. Then with a small wave of his hands the pieces descended. 

They lowered towards the pedestal, before coming to rest in the hollow half of a silver sphere, one side of a globe. It was like the cracked halves of an egg, though the exterior was peppered with strange protrusions, shapes, and sigils. Then, with a cupping motion of his hands, the top half of the globe met the second, sealing it; Thanduwen cursed. She’d seen such an artifact many times before, scattered across Thedas in ruins and caves.

_“I sense one of the artifacts of my people.”_

“ _Teldirthalelan_ ,” she whispered, cursing herself, keeping her voice quiet even though she knew by now she could neither be seen nor heard. She had always suspected there was more to the artifacts than Solas told her; she had never gone so far as to suspect he had created them himself. Then the glow of fade from Solas’ eyes, and he stepped away from the Elven Artifact. How many had he made by now, she wondered? Was this the first, or one of many? All those closed doors she had passed on the lift to the top of the tower—how many artifacts did those rooms contain, waiting to be placed and activated?

At once many remembered things surfaced in her mind: the mosaics of Fen’Harel raising the Veil at the crossroads, _Tarasyl'an Te'las,_ Skyhold, the _place where the sky was held back._ Her eyes narrowed, and though she was unwilling to tear her eyes from the scene in front of her, she turned her gaze to the view from the top of the tower, staring out over the mountains below.

They, too, were familiar. To the northeast, she saw the same summits and ridges that she had memorized from the hours staring out at them on the balcony of her bedroom. There were subtle differences, no doubt markers of the passage of time, but these were the same peaks she’d lived among for years: she knew these mountains and each of their names. Or, at least, she knew the names they’d come to be known by in the Dragon Age; she knew not what name Solas or Idrilla might call them by.

She turned back to the other elves at the sound of Solas’ voice behind her. His cool demeanor was gone, replaced by something vicious. 

“Do you think I am blind to what it is you carry with you, little rebel?” he asked, and though he spoke at a low volume there was a sharpness to his words. His mouth was twisted into an ugly sneer, at once threatening and condescending. “I do not ask for your help; I know you would not give it willingly. But if you interfere in my designs, I will rip your purpose from you like the teeth of the wolf tear at flesh. Then, _friend_ , you will know what it is to be empty, as I am. Perhaps then you will judge me less harshly.”

The sound of his voice, the look on his face (a barely repressed snarl) nearly brought Thanduwen to tears. That cruelty and rage painted plainly across his face was something she had always suspected that he was capable of, simmering underneath the surface. But until now, she had never witnessed it herself. It was terrible to behold.

She circled around the platform, possessed of the perverse desire to see the effect the display had on Idrilla. But that revelation was almost more horrifying than the tone of voice. The color had drained from Idrilla’s face, but her expression was resigned, stony; Idrilla knew the threat was not idle. But that he had threatened her, Thanduwen thought, was not unexpected. She seemed unsurprised by both his cruelty and his threats of violence. 

“Her death has made you cruel, Fen’Harel,” she said, quietly. “But worse, it has made you reckless. You cannot fully know the repercussions of the magic you would unleash in your grief.”

Solas raised an eyebrow and turned his eyes away from Idrilla, back to the artifact on the pedestal. His hand traced a slow arc around the perimeter; runes that Thanduwen could not read nor understand flickered briefly on the artifacts surface, then faded as the magic was absorbed into it. “You are wrong,” he said coolly, tracing another set of runes on the artifact’s surface. “I am now what I always was: Fen’Harel the Rebel. Mythal’s death did not make me into anything that I was not already. Instead it has freed me to do what I was always meant to, for it was she who kept me from walking down this path a long time ago.”

Idrilla looked calm, but Thanduwen could see that her fists were tightly clenched. It was difficult to tell if her breathing was more a sign that she was seething with rage or twisted with anxiety; perhaps it was both. “Many will die,” she said, quietly.

“Perhaps,” Solas said, and the casual tone he used chilled Thanduwen. “But many will live. And those that do will be free.” He turned to look at Idrilla again; for the first time, as he gazed at her, he looked somewhat apologetic. “Nothing comes without sacrifice.”

“That is not for you to decide!” Idrilla said emphatically, the passion back in her voice. And at that passion something shimmered about her: a white halo, barely there but visible in the way it electrified the air around her. 

Then, something seemed to distract her; she whirled and turned her gaze to Thanduwen. By the heat and directness of it, Thanduwen could tell that Idrilla could see her, though Solas took no notice of them.

Idrilla huffed, crossed her arms over her chest as she looked at Thanduwen, the look she gave her thick with disapproval. “Shouldn’t you be with Hawke by now?”

“Hawke…?” Thanduwen repeated.

The ground lurched beneath her. There was a snarling sound—like a predator on the hunt, leaping for the kill. The tower flickered, faded, greened—she was in a circle of silver birch trees, she could hear the gabbling of the Rush of Sighs—then as she turned, that vision, too, slipped away. Suddenly she found herself on a wall of stone, overlooking the Skyhold courtyard—

_“His name is Alistair. He told me he’d be hiding in an old smuggler’s cave, in Crestwood.”_

The vision spun. She was walking along the battlements to Cullen’s office in one of the high towers; from inside, she could hear raised voices. Through the opened door she saw Cullen arguing with Cassandra, gesturing emphatically, his voice saturated with emotion. She had come to—what? Apologize? Check on him, after her words had left such an effect on him in the hall, _I am always prepared to accept your resignation_ —speak with him, but now seemed an inopportune time. Strange; she had never seen Cassandra and Cullen argue so heatedly before. Cassandra caught sight of her gawking through the doorway; closed the door pointedly to give the two more privacy—

With the slam of the door, _slipping—_

One moment she was standing beside Hawke on the battlements—the next she was standing beside a Grey Warden Crest as tall as she was, painted in delicate and detailed washes of pigment on the rotunda wall: above it, Adamant burned—

 _“This is your fortress. These are your deeds.”_ Solas, beside her, smiling; wiping the pigment from his hands with a rag, looking utterly different than he had in the tower. There was a faint smile pulling at the corners of his mouth: satisfaction, contentment. 

A voice—familiar? (Idrilla’s?)—“ _Atisha_ , _da’erelan.”_

Then was a dull, mounting sound; like the roar of the waves at the Storm Coast, and she felt _something_ —the dream, the White Wolf, she no longer knew—pulling at her like the hands of children in the alienage at Halamshiral, like an undertow, tugging her back to _underneath_ , a soft song and the bliss of ignorance, moving through the dreams without the pain of foresight to know what was coming next.  

She allowed it drag her under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: And with that, I break 100k words. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart to all who have left kudos or taken the time to comment on this work. I haven’t written 100k of anything since my shitty Eragon fan fic I wrote when I was, like, 12. It means a lot to me that people are getting some enjoyment out of this work. Know that there is LOTS more yet to come.
> 
>  
> 
> Translations:  
> Teldirthalelan | One who will not learn.  
> Atisha, da’erelan. | Peace, little dreamer.
> 
> Translations by fenxshiral’s Project Elvhen.


	12. A Small and Beautiful Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He kissed not with his lips but with his whole body; it swayed in rhythm with each press of his lips. His hands held her waist, drawing her closer with every cloistered breath, fisted tightly in the cloth of her tunic, clinging for purchase as if to keep themselves from wandering too freely. Each eager kiss he planted in the corner of her mouth felt like a small and beautiful surrender: the gift of himself, given freely and without reservation. For both their mouths were usually so heavily armored, guarded (the clicking of teeth against teeth) against words spilled carelessly. Mouths usually so possessed of intention and reservation moving against one another, dispossessed—for the moment—of their secrets.

A voice—familiar? (Idrilla’s?)—“ _Atisha_ , _da’erelan.”_

There was a dull, mounting sound; like the roar of the waves at the Storm Coast, and she felt _something_ —the dream, the White Wolf, she no longer knew—pulling at her like the hands of the children in the alienage at Halamshiral, like an undertow, tugging her back to _underneath_ , a soft song and the bliss of ignorance, moving through the dreams without the pain of foresight to know what was coming next. 

She allowed it drag her under.

[ _from one grief, into another: the feeling the same, only her place within it, changing._ ]

The light long faded, and everything in her chambers colored ever so slightly golden in the wash of light from the oil lamps. The stack of paperwork on her desk, finally—mercifully—attended to, and Thanduwen rewarding herself with a languid stretch in her chair, arms reaching skywards. The satisfaction of the tightness leaving her muscles, and a weary task concluded. 

Leliana had announced herself at her chambers with a brief but forceful rap of her knuckles on the door; she entered the bedroom without giving any further notice. It was the first hint that something was wrong—a creeping feeling, mist ghosting across still water, the apprehension soft but sharp in the way it punctured through the peace of her solitude—usually, the Spymaster was more than courteous.

“Inquisitor?” Leliana asked, the purple of her hood and shock of her copper hair gleaming in the light as she emerged from the stairs. “I apologize for the intrusion, I know it is late, but I thought, perhaps, you would not want to wait until the morning to address this.”

[f _rom one grief, into another: she had not yet been in the War Room in the dead of night. The colored glass that usually flooded the room with light was black and lifeless, the table below lit with the glow of one hundred small candles, perched in the branches of the chandelier above, wax dripping, beading downwards like strands of pearls. Her hand grasped the small piece of parchment in front of her, and Thanduwen had to will it not to tremble as she read over Keeper Deshanna’s letter once more._ ]

“It is more serious than she says,” Thanduwen said, setting the letter down on the table. Her fingers smoothed the creases in the parchment, worried its edges. “My people would not ask for aid lightly. The fact that she is making such a request at all…” But her voice trailed off, unable to give voice to the thought that threatened to devour her. Her head too full of awful, close darkness. Cold dread had seized upon her heart, wrapped about it like the roots of an eager vine, insatiable and relentless, and climbing.

For this was what she had feared from the beginning: that harm would come to her family because of her role in the Inquisition, because it was she—a Dalish Elf—who had been held aloft as Herald. Her Clan had faced the threat of bandits before, but the fact that they came in such numbers, and so well equipped, suggested to Thanduwen something far more sinister at work. 

It turned her stomach. 

She let her fingers trace the parchment’s edge as she collected herself, continuing to smooth the wrinkles and folds, as if repeated, gentle caresses could will them away. In that moment it was very difficult to keep the faces of her family out of her mind. Drohan, smiling; Ithras, scowling; Ghedril and Sulien telling some crass story by the hearth that had the younger elves howling with laughter. 

They had never been safe, not really. Even before Thanduwen had become part of the Inquisition, each consecutive season brought new risks, fresh peril. In that respect, little had changed. But this time, she was not there to stand beside them. To die beside them, if fate willed it. She secluded herself among stone walls and mountains while the knife tip was pressed to their throats, blood ready to fall—the guilt felt like something gnarled, twisting inside of her, wringing her thin.

Finally, she tore her eyes from the slanted, inked words of her Keeper to up at her advisors. “What are our options?”

Josephine spoke at once, having already calculated their diplomatic advantages, the solution that was most politic and most tactful, if not the most effective. “The letter says they are in a small valley, near Wycome. The Duke of Wycome is an ally of the Inquisition. It is… unusual, for him to allow bandits to prey so close to his city. If we inform him of the threat of raiders in his holdings, no doubt he will move to help the Dalish.”

Thanduwen was always respectful of the Ambassador’s input; it came as no surprise, then, that Josephine balked at the sharp, dismissive tone in Thanduwen’s voice when she replied. “No,” she said, tersely, shaking her head. “No, I will not put the fate of my Clan in the hands of a human noble.”

(She had to focus very hard to keep the word ‘ _shemlen_ ’ out of her refusal.)

Josephine frowned, focused her attention on the scrivener’s tablet n her arms. “There may come a time when you will have little choice but to put your faith in them.”

“But that time is not now,” Thanduwen replied, conviction unwavering. “Not for this.”

“I think, regardless of where her caution comes from, it is well founded,” Leliana interjected. She kept her arms folded behind her back, piercing gaze directed at the Inquisitor. “ If the situation was simple, we might call upon the Duke for help, but the situation is more complex than it appears. I do not like the way Keeper Deshanna describes these supposed ‘bandits;’ I suspect, much like the lyrium miners we discovered in the Hinterlands, they have ulterior motive.”

“That is my fear, as well,” Thanduwen agreed. “The behavior she describes is very unusual. If the bandits are as well equipped as she says, the Dalish likely have little of worth to reward their efforts. They are not attacking them simply to plunder and steal.”

“Then allow me to send my skirmishers to support them,” Leliana said. “The next time the bandits attempt an assault, we will catch them by surprise; it will give Clan Lavellan a chance to retreat to safety. And my forces are best suited to learn the intent of these ‘bandits,’ after the threat has been neutralized. A detail as small as the buckles of a breastplate or the type of arms they carry could tell us more about who sent these bandits and why—a detail that others not trained to observe might miss.”

But Thanduwen was uncertain. And even though she stood before them in her sleeping linens—they provided far less modesty than she would have liked—she was still very much in command of the room. Often, she felt conflicted about the scope of her influence, unwilling to make decisions unilaterally. But this was not so now, not with so much at stake. 

She stared for a time at the map of Thedas spread before her, then lifted her eyes to the one person in the room who had thus far remained silent. “Cullen?”

The Commander seemed taken aback at the sound of his name, surprised to be so frankly and respectfully acknowledged by her. He stepped forward, straightened his posture. “I agree with Leliana,” he said. “It seems unlikely that bandits would attack a Dalish camp with such excessive force.” Cullen leaned over the table, pointed to a small figurine on the map, near Ansburg. “We have troops currently stationed further upstream from your Clan, along the banks of the Minanter River. They have boats. Once the message reaches them, they can arrive at Wycome within two days time; less, probably, once they are aware of the urgency.”

Leliana’s bard training helped her subdue her emotions, but even Thanduwen with her untrained eye could see that she was practically sneering through her words when she responded. “If there is something more sinister going on here, your troops will obliterate whatever evidence there is that can help us uncover the truth,” Leliana said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And they will be easier to see coming. They may save the Dalish now, but if we do not uncover the motivation behind these attacks, new threats may come to replace them in time—attacks that we would be unprepared to anticipate, or defend against.”

“Not to mention the diplomatic repercussions of sending our troops so close to a sovereign city without justifiable cause,” Josephine added. But at the dangerous look Thanduwen flashed her from across the table, she corrected herself: “In the eyes of the nobility, that is; a group of soldiers may be seen as an act of aggression, whereas Leliana’s agents could get in and out unnoticed. I doubt the Duke of Wycombe would appreciate such a display of force so close to his territory.”

“I thought you said the Duke was our ally,” Thanduwen replied. “Can we not inform him ahead of time that we are coming?”

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I think,” Leliana said. “If the Duke is involved in anyway—and we cannot rule out the possibility, for among those in the surrounding area he is one of the few wealthy enough to outfit such a troop of bandits—we risk overplaying our hand if we give him notice of what we plan to do. Which is part of why I believe sending my skirmishers is best. They cannot be tracked. No one will know of their presence until the threat is eliminated. They are good at covering their tracks.”

“ _If_ someone powerful is behind the attacks, then a show of force is the only solution,” Cullen retorted. It was, perhaps, the first time Thanduwen was not irritated by the belligerent tone he adopted when he argued with the other advisors; she felt it, too, that same impatience. “Whoever is behind the attacks will think twice about assaulting the Dalish again, once they know the strength of the Inquisition defends them.”

“You risk escalating the situation,” Leliana responded just as forcefully. “If they are not intimidated into submission—a tactic which, by the way, is not sustainable for the Inquisition, if we want to have any allies at all—they may return in greater number than we are prepared to face.”

Thanduwen heard their voices as they argued, tried to hold onto their words in her head, make sense of it all. But her distress was mounting. Impatient, anxious and torn; her Clan was in danger _right now_ , and here she was, standing safe in her fortress while a group of _shemlen_ bickered over her family’s fate. They weighed Clan Lavellan’s safety against the other goals of the Inquisition as though it were simply another treaty to negotiate. And for all of that—all the might at her disposal, all her options—she felt utterly powerless. The air in the War Room seemed suddenly so thin; it was difficult to hear the bickering of her advisors over the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears…

“Stop!” she cried, silencing her advisors, her voice a bit more loud and forceful than she had intended. “Just, stop. I…” but her voice trailed off as she looked helplessly at the map spread across table, the little pawns and icons that symbolized troops and scouts. So many lives at stake, under her command, but in that moment, she only cared about a select few. And her own awareness of that bias only fed her distress.

“Give me a moment alone, please,” she said, breathily, backing away from the table. “I need to think…” 

Then she turned, fled through the doors of the War Room.

 

 

Once she was alone in the silent hall, the doors to the war room closed behind her, she leaned her back against the cool stone of the walls and closed her eyes. 

And as she struggled to slow her breathing, calm the frantic pace of her heart, she thought of Solas. Would he still be awake, at this late hour? What would he be doing, if not walking another forgotten path through the Fade, oblivious to her dilemma? A part of her wanted to run to him, ask him for his advice, but she knew adding another voice to the many would not help. And after all, she reminded herself with some bitterness, he did not consider the Dalish to be _his people_ ; he owed her Clan no greater allegiance than Josephine or Leliana.

But she longed for him, all the same—if not to advise her, then simply for the comfort of his company. She trusted him above all others. Perhaps it was that trust that always made her feel safe in his presence… isolated, for a time, from the concerns and responsibilities her title placed on her.

When the door to the War Room opened again, she did not know how much time had passed. But through the opened doors she could hear Leliana’s voice, a chastising hiss, before the door clicked shut on her. When she turned towards the sound she saw Commander Cullen walking towards her, recognized the shuffling hesitation in his gate that was most evident when he was uncomfortable.

“Inquisitor,” he said, voice thick with trepidation. He knew he was intruding, but the fact that he was— despite her clearly expressed desire to be left alone—impressed her. It was unlike him, to disobey so direct an order. She doubted he would have done so unless he had something very compelling to say. “Forgive me; I will return to the War Room if you prefer to be alone. But I wanted a private word with you.”

Thanduwen watched him as he approached, nodded, every so slightly, in consent. Cullen visibly relaxed.

He came to a rest beside her, leaning against the wall so that they stood side by side. (It was easier, like this, to speak to her without having to look at her, to see the way she looked at _him_.) His armor clanked against the stone. “Inquisitor, I know… that we have had our disagreements in the past. Some of them quite heated. But I…”

Cullen hesitated, sighed. His tone was soft, a welcome change from the heated conversation inside the room. “I do not like to talk about the Blight,” he said. “I was stationed at Kinloch Hold when we received the first reports of darkspawn in the south of Ferelden. I thought of my family _constantly_. Wondering whether or not they were safe, whether or not they would survive. It… distracted me, compromised my ability to carry out my duties. I did terrible things. And I know,” he said, hastily, as if already anticipating the criticism she was so quick to lay upon him, “that even if there had been no Blight, I would have been capable of the same cruelties. But I believe the danger to my kin moved me to….” He sighed, screwed up his face. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him bring his hand up to the back of his neck, a nervous tick. “I know that pain, of not being able to be in two places at once. Being torn between your duty and your family.”

Thanduwen had never spoken to Cullen about his family before. It was clear from listening to him how much they meant to him, how fond he was of them. She couldn’t help but wonder at it, a little bit. They’d had their disagreements, true; but for the first time she realized how little effort she’d made to get to know him better. That for all those disagreements, the man who Commander her troops was still practically a stranger to her.

It didn’t change what she knew about him. But it did make him seem, for the moment, a small measure more human.

“I do not want you to feel that way,” Cullen said, finally, and he turned to face her, though he kept his eyes cast down towards the floor. “You carry a great burden; so many depend on you. I wish for you to be able to attend your responsibilities without fearing that danger will come to your loved ones because of your actions. It will cloud your judgement, and that is something you cannot afford.”

No matter how she felt about Cullen—and the vile nature of some of his past deeds still turned her stomach each time she looked at him, the way he’d treated mages ( _how, she wondered, did he see her?_ )—the sentiment was kind. It softened her. “I have asked for a moment alone to consider,” Thanduwen said, and a smile was playing about her lips as she did, “and you have pursued me to convince me that your course of action is best.”

She’d called him out, he knew it. A torn look crossed his face before he continued; he released his hand from his neck, brought it down to the pommel of his sword, fidgeted with it lightly to reassure himself. “Some of our very best men are stationed in the Free Marches, on that river,” Cullen said, emphatic but gentle. “I know their captain personally. I would not push if I was not confident that they could reach your Clan in time and protect them. These men are deeply devoted to you, after what you did in Haven. They would lay down their lives before they allowed your kin to perish under their watch.”

The truth in his words didn’t help. She wanted no holy army, no zealots laying their lives down for her. For a moment they both settled into the space of that thought, weighing its solemnity. Cullen stirred first.

He paused, lifted his hand from the pommel of his sword and rummaged through his cloak. “A few days ago, you welcomed my resignation,” he said, pulling a piece of parchment from his pocket. When he handed it to her, she looked at him with a sudden curiosity. “I… have already had my own doubts, about how fit I am to serve in this position. You hold my resignation now in your hands. If my soldiers fail to protect your Clan, if any harm befalls them because our soldiers failed in their duty… you are welcome to use it.”

Thanduwen could not stop the surprise from her face; her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open before she reigned her features into a more neutral expression. She flashed him a wary glance before opening the parchment in her hands. She might have suspected it was a prank, if Cullen had an ounce of humor in his body, but she’d never known him to be anything but serious. And indeed, contained within, written in a surprisingly elegant, slanted script, was an formal offer of Commander Cullen’s resignation.

She raised her eyes to him in wonder. Of all the things she might have expected him to risk losing job over, the safety of her Clan was not one of them. She knew that, if he failed, his resignation (or his dismissal?) would not ease the pain of losing her family. Indeed, she thought, nothing short of seeing the “bandits” responsible dead by her own hand would ease that pain—though she thought it better not to voice that thought. But the offer of his resignation made plain that he was sincere. She knew what this position in the Inquisition meant to him personally; he would not risk it on a whim. He truly believed he could protect them. Cullen had made bad judgements before, but this felt different, somehow. She believed him. 

For what was possibly the first time, she trusted him.

They entered the War Room together. She had tucked Cullen’s resignation letter into the pockets of her comfortable linens; there was no need to speak of it with the others, not yet.

“Commander Cullen will be sending his troops to Wycome,” she said, in a tone that made clear that a decision had been made and that the subject was no longer under discussion. Josephine shook her head; Leliana’s features were set in a practiced, neutral expression. “I want updates by raven daily. Leliana, coordinate with Cullen to see that it is done.”

“As you command, Inquisitor,” Leliana said, bowing her head lightly.

And, without another word, Thanduwen turned on her heel, and exited the War Room.

But not to retire—not to sleep, not yet. She couldn’t, not with her head so full of plans and her heart so full of dread. ( _But how she had needed to escape, to get free of that room_.) Cullen’s words had comforted her little, even if she had agreed to his course of action. Nothing would ease her anxiety until she knew her Clan was safe, the bandits eliminated, and the villain responsible for sending them severely punished.

As she walked through the empty Throne Room—quiet and cold, the hearth where Varric liked to sit already reduced from a roaring flame to smoldering embers—the even, measured padding of her bare feet against the stone seemed to echo through the vast space. The rustling of her night linens resounded, like the wind passing through an aravel’s sails.

She wondered—did he already hear her, approaching? Did he recognize that pattern of footfalls as her own?

( _By now, she could recognize him by the rhythm of his step._ )

If he was already asleep, she would simply pace the battlements until her restlessness was exhausted, her body tired enough to lie still in bed if not surrender wholly to sleep. This she decided even as she approached the door to the rotunda, the rational part of her mind telling her that it would calm her just as well as the company she sought. But the flutter of her heart at the sight of the rotunda door cracked open—a flickering light escaping from the room within—told her that it would have been a wholly unsatisfying substitute.

After almost five months, this simple fact remained true: there was no one in the Inquisition who she respected so fully, [ _loved with the warmth that she loved, though this she still kept secret, even from herself_ ], trusted as deeply as she trusted Solas.

He stood with his back to her, one arm folded against the small of his back, his free hand running gently over the surface of the rotunda wall, which had been painted, coated so that now the wall was both smooth, and white. She watched him inquisitively as she entered the room. When he turned to face her, a smile playing about his lips, he seemed unsurprised to find her standing there—but by the subtle, barely noticeable lift of his eyebrows, it seemed that he had not expected to find her in her pajamas. She looked more feminine than she usually did, in the soft linens she never bothered to carry with her when traveling. Her hair, usually swept back out of her face, hung about her features in loose, black curls.

“Good evening, Inquisitor,” he welcomed, the corners of his lips lifting in the lightest of smiles.

“I’m wearing my sleeping linens, Solas,” she chided, gently, as she crossed the room to his side. “I think we can dispense with the formalities.”

“Perhaps,” Solas said, tilting his head. “But the title is new, and it is worth repeating. I should grow used to using it. And you should come celebrate hearing it. I know you were not eager for this,” Solas said, watching her out of the corner of his eye as she approached him, “but you should be proud. It is a testament to your strength and your virtue that the humans have raised you so high.”

Those words twisted inside of her like a small, sharp blade; she tried to keep the feeling from showing on her face, but Solas must have caught it, or sensed her disquiet. His expression darkened. “Is something wrong, lethallin?”

There were many things wrong: chief among them, that she was not nearly as strong and virtuous as he believed she was. She remembered that feeling in the War Room, like the walls closing in on her: trying to plan a course of action and without the strength to even endure the debate of her advisors, unable to withstand the pain of all the possibilities in which the blood of her family was spilt because of her own lack of action, her own inadequacy.

The corners of her mouth twitched while she searched for the words. Then, quietly, softly, “My Clan is in danger. It’s difficult to say how much. That’s why I’m only half dressed; I was about to sleep when Leliana brought me the news.”

Solas turned to face her, his eyebrows knit, expression troubled. “What kind of danger?”

Thanduwen waved her hand, a dismissive gesture meant to alleviate the sudden gravity of his tone. It was not the least bit convincing. “Bandits, or so the Keeper says. And I…” and a wry smile broke over her features. She laughed at herself, shook her head, crossed her arms over her chest.

Solas waited, patiently, for her to collect herself. This was one of the things she so loved about him: that when she struggled to put her emotions to words, looking for the right way to convey what she meant ( _so in love with language ever since Deshanna taught her to read; so careful with it, a tool and a weapon at once_ ) he always waited for her, gave her the room she needed to express herself the way she wanted to. As he watched her, she kept her eyes trained on the smooth white surface in front of her, pocked with little holes. She wondered, if she reached out to touch the wall, would it be damp?

“I sent Inquisition troops to defend them,” Thanduwen said, finally, raising her own eyebrows, surprised at herself. No beating around the bush. “I hate—I _loathe_ sending soldiers to do our bidding. Especially now that I am the Inquisition’s leader. I don’t want to conquer, slaughter, rule through the sword; I don’t want the Inquisition to be _that_. And yet when my Clan was in danger I did not hesitate.”

“Lethallin—”

“I value their lives above the lives of others,” she continued, cutting him off. “Their safety is more important to me than… peace in the Free Marches, politics, hierarchies. Josephine’s sure we’ll piss of some nobles by tramping across their land just for the _possibility_ that our soldiers might be able to reach my Clan in time to help them. And yet so many others have died, directly or indirectly because of decisions I had made; times when I decided their lives were _not_ worthy.” She couldn’t look at him; her eyes were directly at the wall in front of her but her gaze was far away, staring at some dark stain deep in her psyche that she could not clean off. “I want the Inquisition to be fair and just but how can I expect that when I am neither? I’m not measured enough, not disciplined enough. I’m not strong,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I am weak.”

Solas watched her, his face growing increasingly more concerned, but she could not meet his eyes. She forced a laugh, tightened the grip of her hands on her forearms. “And I _know_ all this,” she said, emphatically, “and still I wouldn’t do anything differently. I know I should have… listened to Leliana, or Josephine, and considered the options more carefully. But I can’t bear the thought of harm coming to my Clan because of me, because of what I have done, or what I fail to do. The pain it would cause me to lose them… I have decided that was more important than the other considerations. I have to live with that choice.”

[ _This was one of the things she loved about him: that when she struggled to put her emotions into words, he listened. She could divulge to him all her self-doubt and her pride. She could lay bare her ugliness before him; he never judged her for it. She believed this was because he understood it. To so many others, she was Herald, Leader, Inquisitor; she could not falter before them. But she could reveal herself to Solas in all her weakness and still he would smile at her; despite all of that, he respected her. If she was strong, it was only because she had a space where she was allowed to be vulnerable. If she was strong, it had a lot to do with him._ ]

Then she fell silent. Solas stared at her, his expression soft, letting the silence linger for longer than most would have to be sure she had nothing left to say. Then, in a kind voice, he asked, “are you finished?”

With the words, yes, perhaps, but not the emotions behind them; she felt so keenly everything she’d said. She did not regret the way she had behaved, she would not change anything; what she regretted was that she did not feel she was _capable_ of acting any other way, of being more (or less) ruthless; with others, with herself. And on top of that shame and guilt, dangling like a sword above her head: the fact that, whatever action she took, it guaranteed nothing. There was a very real chance that everyone she had loved before she had fallen into the Inquisition would perish, her whole world turn to ash, as ephemeral as smoke. And she was too many miles away, in a cold castle, a place she never should have seen.

When she turned to Solas, her eyes were glassy with tears.

“Oh, lethallin,” he soothed, and he collected her into his arms. She folded into him effortlessly, eager for the comfort of another body’s warmth against her own. She pressed her head to his chest; his chin came to rest gently on the crown of her head as her lungs heaved with shaking breaths—not quite sobs, but close. 

“I can’t imagine what you think of me,” she said, her voice muffled by the embrace. “About to cry like a child, unable to handle making the decisions this job demands of me. Falling to pieces at the first threat of danger to my family, when the fate of the whole continent is hanging in the balance.”

“On the contrary, lethallin,” Solas said, and Thanduwen could feel the hairs on the top of her head stir under the warmth of his breath as he spoke, “I would have been far more concerned if the safety of your Clan did not affect you so.”

She pressed herself against him, allowed herself a few more moments of the privacy the embrace offered, her face pressed against his tunic. It was damp beneath her cheeks. His hands were resting gently on her shoulder blades…. 

All at once, she became self-conscious of how long she had held him, clutching at him. And in nothing but her linens.

Even if she wanted him to hold her (and she did) these were not the circumstances in which she wanted to be held. Not out of pity, or consolation. And that mattered.

Thanduwen cleared her throat, pushed away from him, hastily wiping the tears from her eyes with the heel of her palm. “I don’t—I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said, apologetic. “It’s done, it’s decided. I came here because your company has always been such a comfort, to me. I just… needed to get that off my chest. I did come here for conversation, but not _that_ conversation.” She sniffed, planted a hand on her hip, the other combing through her hair, pushing it back out of her face. She could feel his eyes on her, watching her carefully—unconvinced, perhaps, of her show of composure after how she had eviscerated herself, the self-flagellation in her words. But she was adamant that the discussion be ended; the longer it dragged on, the higher the probability that she’d be reduced to a blubbering mess. 

(That was still likely to happen, of course; she’d just prefer it not happen when Solas was present to witness it.)

She had turned to face the wall again, the smooth white surface upon it, freshly laid. “What’s this?” she asked, reaching her hand out, her fingertips brushing the plaster delicately.

Solas was perturbed still, she could tell, but he pushed it down and backwards. He wanted to support her; if she wanted a distraction, he would give it to her. “Ahh,” he said, the vowels long and low and thick with memory. He ran his hand over the smooth, damp set of the plaster on the wall, brought his fingers to rest only a few inches from hers. “A long time ago,” he said, “in another life,” looking at her conspiratorially, “I used to paint.”

“It’s art?” she asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. The rotunda was enormous. She balked at the thought of covering each of its walls with paintings. It was a daunting task; she wouldn’t have known where to begin.

“Not yet, but it will be,” Solas replied, smiling fondly at the blank surface. “The pigment will be applied directly to the plaster, but I need to build up a series of layers before the final thin, wet layer is laid down with the paint. It seals the color into the wall as it dries.” He lifted his hand, rapped a knuckle against the surface of the plaster; the knocking sound it made was muffled and dull.“It is a… detail oriented kind of work, unforgiving of mistakes and not well suited to the nomadic lifestyle. I have not had the opportunity to practice in some time.” Then he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting. “But I doubt you came here for a lecture on painting technique.”

“No, I—”

“Thanduwen,” Solas said, and his voice was commanding even as it was kind. She had said her piece; now he would say his. That was how it worked between them, the unspoken agreement they’d made. “If you seek a distraction, I am happy to provide it. We’ll go somewhere…” he said, and his voice trailed off. The corners of his eyes crinkled curiously, and he wet his lips with his tongue. “Far more interesting than here, and we can do whatever you like. Avoid conversations that would bring you discomfort. But before we do that…”

And he reached out across the surface of the plaster, took her hand gently in his, pulling it away from the wall and cupping it between both his palms. “There’s something I wish to say. And I’d like for you to hear me.”

Thanduwen looked up at him, her eyes wide, still a bit red, and she nodded her head solemnly. “Okay,” she sniffed. “I’m listening.”

“The answers are never easy,” Solas said, looking straight into her eyes. “When we first met, I told you I was curious what kind of a hero you would become. And you have surprised me. You are… kind, compassionate, wise. And strong, though you think you are not. And you’re going to fail,” he said, and at this, Thanduwen shook her head, tried to back away from him; he held her hand tighter between his, preventing her retreat. “You will not save everyone. I need you to hear me: you will not save everyone. You cannot. But you have to try, even though the fear of failure makes it painful. It’s the attempt that matters, if it is sincere and dedicated, done with the best of intentions. The attempt, even in the face of failure, even _after_ failure, is what matters. I see you struggle every day to do what is right, not only for yourself but for the people you serve. And that is no small thing.”

She was still shaking her head, unable to look him in the face. There was truth in his words, undeniable as it was painful. There was blood on her hands; before this was over, there would be plenty more. ( _Enough to bathe in_.) She directed her gaze upwards, trying to blink the tears from her eyes without allowing them to spill over. “I can’t do it alone,” she croaked. “The burden is too great.”

“You do not have to,” Solas said, soft, his thumb circling a patch of skin on then back of her hand to soothe. “No one expects you to—me, least of all. It is why so many of us have flocked to the Inquisition’s banner: because we believe in you, and we wish to help you, in whatever way we can.”

Thanduwen sniffed. She knew he was right, but she was grateful for the reminder all the same. (It was why she had come to him, wasn’t it? To feel, for some small space of time, less alone?) She turned her eyes to their hands, folded together; she brought her free hand up to join them, lighting her fingers gently over Solas’, tracing the strong bones of his wrist as he continued.

“Only time will tell if you made the right choice with your Clan. Though I have never met them, I feel as if I know them, as if I had lived for years alongside them because of how frequently you speak of them. Your brother Drohan, Keeper Deshanna, even Tael Ithras, always so _envious_ of you…” 

They shared a chuckle at the Second’s expense. Since Leliana had brought her Deshanna’s letter, she had thought of them often, and picturing their faces was like a twisting pain inside of her: the feeling of something precious just out of reach, in danger of being lost. But somehow, when Solas said their names aloud, she did not feel that pain. Perhaps it was because of how well Solas did know them, despite never having met them; how easily he could conjure them up. She felt only warmth. 

The ghost of the laugh still lingering about her lips, she turned her eyes up to his face.

“There is not a doubt in my mind that they are all nothing but proud of you, each of them,” he said, quietly, and he lifted a hand to brush a tear from her cheek gently with his knuckle. “And every day that you wake, bear your title, make decisions based on the values and judgement that they grew in you—you honor them. You carry them with you in the wisdom of your actions. They will always be with you, no matter what comes to pass.”

For a time, he held her hands, smiling kindly as the tears threatened to well again in her eyes. But after a time, she gave one final, shuddering breath; she nodded to signal her consent. His grin widened.

“ _Now_ ,” he said emphatically, to signal that he had said his fill. He released her hands and turned away from her, crossing the rotunda to a small wooden case, containing a multitude of tiny drawers. His fingers danced as he read the carefully penned labels, before settling on one of the knobs and pulling the drawer open. “If it is a distraction you seek—something novel and mysterious to take your mind off of present circumstances…”

When he turned back to her, his cupped palm was full of dried blossoms. She peered curiously at them as he approached. The petals were dusky, muddy lavender, dried and sapped of their color; perhaps they had once been blue. He pinched one blossom between forefinger and thumb and raised it so that she could better inspect it, before placing the lot of them into her hand, closing her fingers over them gently.

“Return to your chamber, and take these with you. Burn them at your bedside and wait for me.” His voice was quiet, playful, though not in the least bit lascivious when he said, “I will come to you.”

His words were thick with promise and secrecy, and the effect it had upon her was immediate. She turned her head to the side, looked at Solas through narrowed eyes, a smile wavering on her lips. She could not help her curiosity. It drowned out all the other thoughts in her head, protests: that in a time of such crisis she should not permit herself this indulgence. That, circumstances notwithstanding, she should not permit him to _call upon her in her bedchambers,_ especially in the middle of the night _._ ( _That she liked too much the idea of him calling upon her in the dead of night._ ) 

But she was confident (and she was surprised at her own disappointment at this fact) that there was nothing salacious in the offer. And she had just come through the Throne Room herself; it was desolate. No one would see him as he made his way to her tower.

(And, the truth was: she didn’t really care if they did.)

She tugged at her lip between her teeth, still measuring him with her look, wondering. “You said we were going somewhere?” she half-asked, half-asserted, testing him.

“Trust me,” he said, softly, simply; and she did. Even with that mischievous look in the corner of his eyes again, dark with hidden agendas, all his unknown depths. “I’ll join you soon.”

 

 

Hours later, “Do you smell that?” asked in the deep quiet of night under a sky littered with stars. “That pleasant… smokey sort of smell?”

Solas paused, lifted his chin as if to better catch the scent, his eyelids fluttering shut. He inhaled deeply, savoring the breath before turning back to Thanduwen. “Probably Adaan, working on something in his cabin.”

It was dark, and Haven quiet, and they were alone, walking alongside one another; and she could feel Solas’ eyes lingering on her, long past the point when the words had left his mouth. The cold mountain air did nothing to lessen the heat she felt creeping up the sides of her neck under his persistent gaze. There was nothing carnal about it—she could tell it was just the weight of a question being measured on the tip of his tongue, but it flustered her all the same.

“What?” she prompted, raising an eyebrow at him.

He smiled—wrinkled his nose in amusement. It was such a whimsical expression, and so rare on him; it warmed her again to see him so comfortable and mischievous. He pursed his lips briefly before surrendering his question. “For so long, you wanted to leave this place. Do you still despise it, as you did then?” He turned back to her, tilting his head inquisitively.

“I never _despised_ it,” she retorted, but even though her refusal had come quickly (instinctually) she knew it to be false. She had struggled so much here. She knew that the struggling was not yet behind her. But in the beginning, it had been so easy to see Haven as an antagonist in and of itself—this ancient village of Andrastian worship and pilgrimage—an amalgamation of all the things she wanted no part of. She had refused to be at home, here.

And Solas knew it, too. “I saw the way you’d sigh with relief as we left through the gates, how much easier you would breathe the farther we travelled from this mountain. You would laugh more freely.”

Her body reeled with the smile that broke across her features, the pleasure that overtook her. She felt light and paper thin, transparent under his gaze. Did he see the way those words made her _flutter_ , the way she bubbled with joy to hear them? He _saw_ her. Others looked to her as leader, as Herald, as Inquisitor, but when Solas looked at her—with that piercing, deliberate look of his— _he saw her._ This was why she had told him so much about her Clan: because she felt as at home with him as she had felt with them. (Always wondering if [ _hoping that_ ] he felt the same—her accomplice, her partner.)

She joked: “I didn’t know you were watching me so closely.”

It was his turn to look away, grin still pulling at his mouth. Difficult to make out in the dim light of evening, but she almost thought his cheeks were coloring. “As you have reminded me on more than on occasion, it was my responsibility to watch you closely, when we first met. To ensure that you woke, though I knew not what to expect when you did.” He turned to her, a strange expression on his face. “Many things… changed, then.”

“Like what?” 

“Everything,” he said, as if it were so simple; and she had to swallow the sharp panic that bloomed in her at that, the fear that she would not be able to control her reactions, the risk that she might take that simple confession too much to heart. “The friendship that grew between us. It gave me cause to hope.”

“Hope?” she repeated, her face a battleground— _everything, hope_ —expressing a forced and closely guarded neutrality. Mastered into submission so that it would not betray the hopes that were her own, the ones she felt with such intensity when he looked at her like that, all adoration and respect ( _his hands on mine, fingers circling, wanting him to trace each part of me with them—)_

“Yes,” Solas said, quietly. “Hope. An underrated emotion, and not always a necessary one. One need not hope to act on principals, but it helps. And as I came to know you I…”

His steps slowed to a halt, and he turned to her. For a long time—for a short time?—she did not know, incapable of measuring it in anything other than the space between her heartbeats ( _thunderous_ as he looked at her) a confession trapped in his throat ( _that beautiful column of alabaster and sinew, the way it jumped when he swallowed_ ) before he turned his eyes away, over her head, upwards….

Something pained flashed across his face, bright and unmistakable as lightning, and gone as swiftly as it had come. She turned in place, followed his gaze upwards into the sky where the Breach twisted, livid green and malevolent—but when she looked at Solas again he was calm.

“I felt the whole world change,” he said, quietly. “We had a chance.”

And as they shared another look, it struck Thanduwen how _quiet_ it was. The hour must be very late; everyone else was tucked away for the evening, in the darkest hours of the night, just before dawn.

And it occurred to her, quite suddenly, that she had never before been so alone with him. They had shared plenty of time, separate and apart from others—scouting in the Frostbacks for Skyhold, huddled together on the Storm Coast—but it had never felt quite like this. So close, and heavy, and…

Something tightened in her throat at that observation.

She shouldn’t even be considering the thoughts that their privacy was inspiring in her. Firstly, in all of the Inquisition, Solas was her greatest friend. Or something like it. After all the time they had spent, listening to one another, she could not trust anyone or speak so frankly with anyone as she did with him. Surely it was best not to muddle it, with whatever this newfound boldness was trying to stir up within her. And secondly, even if that were not a consideration, there was still so much at stake. In all of the Inquisition, Solas knew the most about the Breach, about the Anchor, about the Orb that had placed its mark upon her. It would be a poor choice, to do anything that could complicate his ability to help with that.

And yet….

From where they stood in the center of the village she felt the past five months closing in around her like the cover of nightfall. There, the hut where he had given her that wolfish grin, where she had discovered both his wit and his grace. There, the path to the ramshackle tack hut, counting the freckles on his strong forearms in the dying light of evening. Below, the clearing where he had held her as they danced, oblivious to the world, wrapped up in one another, before—

There: _Y_ _ou must make me a promise—a dirtha’vhen’an._

Creators, she was foolish. 

“I felt the world change when you kissed me goodbye,” Thanduwen said quietly. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, before she could second-guess herself into silence.

Solas took a step away from her, blinking at her twice, before his face transformed into a perfectly practiced expression of confusion. “Did I?” he asked. But it was not very convincing. There was something about him—perhaps the color in his face, or a tightening in his neck—that seemed almost nervous.

“You did,” she said, quietly, pointing to where the trebuchet stood. “Just there.” 

( _And for a moment, both were silent, stewing in their own indecision: both of them aware of the danger, both of them pulled, despite that danger, together. Wondering if either of them had the strength to take the first step. And what was she supposed to tell him? What could she have said that he did not already know about her? At the top of the mountain, at the Vir Vian, she had fainted when she did because she had finally caught sight of him behind Cullen running towards her—and that it was this sight [knowing that he was safe; that she was safe, with him] that had her loosening her grip on consciousness, giving into her exhaustion. On the Storm Coast, after Redcliffe, she had basked in the comfort of his company—knowing, then, the pain it would cause her to lose him, having felt it in that ghastly future. How it had been made abundantly clear to her how much she had come to need him. Should she confess the true reason why he kept catching her glancing at his hands? Should she explain that sometimes she stared too long into his eyes because she feared if she did not they would fall to his lips and then— then…)_

It was… complicated.

But when she looked up at him again, it became vey clear that it really wasn’t. No matter how many ways she tried to deny what she felt about him, it was really quite simple.

She closed the distance between them, her hand coming to rest on his chest as she tilted her face up to his. 

Her kiss was daring, declarative—a gentle force. And when her lips met his the world fell into a silent hush. Gone were the sounds of the wind in the trees. All she could hear was the rush of her own breath as she breathed into the kiss. But Solas was still beneath it. 

(Not resisting.)

(But not surrendering, either.)

She released his mouth, eyebrows knit, twisted in the fresh, hot shame and embarrassment that his dismissal stirred within her; she did not open her eyes until her head was turned away, unable to look at him.

But he shook his head at her, _no, no;_ a rejection of her shame. Defiant, as she tried to pull away from him. Then his hand was upon her waist, forceful and wanting, fierce. 

He pulled her into his arms and returned her kiss with one twice as hungry.

He kissed not with his lips but with his whole body; it swayed in rhythm with each press of his lips. His hands held her waist, drawing her closer with every cloistered breath, fisted tightly in the cloth of her tunic, clinging for purchase as if to keep themselves from wandering too freely. Each eager kiss he planted in the corner of her mouth felt like a small and beautiful surrender: the gift of himself, given freely and without reservation. For both their mouths were usually so heavily armored, guarded (the clicking of teeth against teeth) against words spilled carelessly. Mouths usually so possessed of intention and reservation moving against one another, dispossessed—for the moment—of their secrets.

[ _Gone were the sounds of the wind in the trees, and the ground beneath them, and the sky above: everything else vanishing as if it had all been vapor. All that stayed behind was this: the charged thing between them, as brilliant as the break of dawn on the solstice. All doubt and pain cast aside to make space for this moment where she felt renewed and present and alive, a moon-gorged tide, a mountain creek swelling in pale spring as winter's chill is melted away._ ]

He had opened his mouth to her, that wellspring of words and story, his mouth like the mouth of a river and twice as sweet. She soared, wanted to sing—folded into him, effortlessly. If she retreated from the kiss (only ever to catch her breath) he pursued; she laughed with delight as he pulled her back into his arms, the sound soon muffled by his lips on hers, kissing through her grin. 

The soft touch of his hand on her cheek, holding her face delicately, so gently, as if was having difficulty believing in it. This moment. Heavy and brilliant and full of promise, and all the ways the future could enfold from this moment forward, spreading before them like the blue lines of the Minanter Delta, or the great and mighty branches of a _vallasdahlen_.

And it was too much; too much all at once.

They broke apart, breathing heavily, their noses brushing against one another’s as they caught their breath. Thanduwen cracked open her eyes just to look at him, and he was so near (closer than he’d ever been) that she couldn’t get his face in focus but she could see his eyes were still shut. His breath hitched; he leaned in closer, delivering the faintest brush of his lips to hers, before his eyebrows knitted in distress and he backed away from her, shaking his head once more, _no, no._

“We shouldn’t,” Solas said, quietly. _No, no;_ once to discourage her retreat, but now in rejection of the very intimacy he had pursued. The tone in his voice: anguish, remorse. “It isn’t right. Not even here.”

It made her feel foolish. She was standing in the center of Haven with her neck flushed from desire, lips plump and red from being kissed so wildly. Disheveled-looking as she stood before him, and he was saying, _we shouldn’t._ It seemed too late for that. But when she opened her mouth to speak, that was not the point she challenged. “What do you mean, “even here”?”

And though he might have been disappointed in his lack of restraint, displeased with himself for kissing her— _we shouldn’t, but we did—_ he could not keep the satisfaction of his face, the pride in his own cleverness when he responded, “Where did you think we were?”

She looked around her: the silent huts, the quiet Chantry, not even a patrol on the outer wall. Cullen could be careless, but he never would have allowed the village to go unguarded. Haven was desolate. Her eyes turned to the trebuchet— _I felt the world change when you kissed me. You did, just there—_ standing tall and ominous, but thoroughly intact. She remembered—

_You must make me a promise—a dirtha’vhen’an._

—Haven was buried, ashes and ruin beneath a deep drift of snow.

“Where are we?” she asked, turning back to him.

“That’s a matter of debate,” Solas replied, grinning at her. “Probably best discussed after you _wake up._ ”

 

 

Her eyes wide like shutters thrust open on windows: she awoke in her bed with a gasp, launching herself upright. Slippery and flashing, the events of the night before came back to her, tumbling recollections like pebbles caught up in a frothing tide.

_My Clan in danger — Cullen’s resignation — the smooth plaster, a promise of color to come — a kiss…._

For a moment she sat with her hands planted in the mattress, breathing. Allowing the recollection of the dream and all of its implications overwhelm her. Groggy, but awake enough to feel shame; in all that had happened, she found herself pondering not the fate of her Clan, but the events that had transpired in the Fade. She brought her hand up to her face, brushing her fingertips against her lips, remembering the kiss… she lingered in the memory, let its softness cushion her awakening before logic inevitably intruded.

Because now that she was awake she knew Solas was right. They shouldn’t have; and they should not in the future. She had been weak, dizzy with the anxiety of lives in her hands, the world on her shoulders. She had been looking for comfort, something familiar and warm. It was not an auspicious way to begin any sort of emotional entanglement—any sort of _romance._

She scoffed at the thought.

( _But the feeling of his hands when he held her own—not the first time. This had begun a long, long time ago; in some ways, it was a surprise it had taken this long for such a collision, nigh inevitable since the moment he’d seized her hand in the mountains._ )

She remembered so vividly what it had felt like to be held by him, as if he were still with her, beside her—the warmth of his body, the insistence of his hands… how she had felt so free and easy.

She groaned, bowed her head forward into her hands and rubbed at her face with her fingertips, trying to will herself into wakefulness and out of the groggy stupor she’d found herself in after being wrenched so suddenly from dreaming.

_(Had he really been able to command her into waking…?)_

Blinking, eyes bleary. Clear daylight pressed through the colored panes of glass, speckling the floor with color. By the angle and the intensity of the light she could tell it was still early morning, just after dawn. Skyhold would just be beginning to stir.

She stared at the light for a long time, arms looped around her knees, sitting silently in bed. Waiting. Mustering up her resolve, her resignation.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, pressed the soles of her feet against the cold stone of the floor, delighted in the shiver that ran down her spine at the contact. Her eyes fell to the table beside her bed, upon which still sat the metal dish in which she’d burned the dried blossoms Solas had given her the previous night in the rotunda. They’d been reduced to a chalky ash, silvery. She reached out, pinched a bit in her fingers, rolled it between the pads. Even that simple gesture released more of their fragrant scent into the air; at first whiff, Thanduwen felt a renewed weariness come over her, wiling her back to the bed.

Catching herself drifting again, she shook her head violently (as if to shake the weariness from her) and brushed the ash from her hands. Then she stood, and crossed the room to her armoire.

If she was swift, she thought, stepping out of her linens, she might reach the rotunda before any of her advisors discovered she was awake.

 

 

Solas had barely moved from the spot where she’d left him. He stood in the center of the rotunda with his back turned to her, but she could see the parchment he held in front of him; his free hand he traced lines in dark charcoal across its surface. Occasionally, he would extend his drawing arm, the stick of charcoal held delicately between his fingers, and he’d pause, as if measuring something, before jotting own another few gestural lines on his parchment.

“Good morning,” she said, announcing her presence.

Solas turned, smiled. But the grin flickered. He appeared unsure—almost nervous. “Good morning, Inquisitor. Sleep well?”

“Dreamt well, certainly,” she quipped back. “Though I can’t say how rested I am as a result. But it is a lovely, brisk morning. Will you walk with me?”

 

 

By the time they exited through Skyhold’s gates, the fortress had barely stirred from its slumber; few witnessed their departure.

For some time they walked in silence. Solas kept his hands joined behind his back; a deliberate gesture of self-restraint, she suspected. He looked relaxed; she wondered if he really was, or if he was roiling with the same disquiet she felt within her.

For Thanduwen's unease was plain. She kept glancing over her shoulder back at Skyhold's walls, watching the morning patrols parade across, keeping guard over the valley below. After several repetitions of the same gesture, Solas turned to her, amused.

“We’re out of earshot, now,” he said, quietly. Then, “Are you embarrassed?”

“No," Thanduwen replied, with an apologetic smile. "But I have a feeling I'm about to be.” 

Indeed, embarrassment seemed a certainty. Especially because—while buttoning her jacket, while fastening her boots, while climbing the stairs down to the rotunda—she had racked her brain for the words to tell Solas how she felt, and come up with nothing. 

(This was, most likely, because she did not quite understand how _she_ felt, too many emotions at once, and difficult to untangle: The pain—persistent, even now, though its drumbeat had deadened beneath the complexity of everything that had come after—of being so far from her family, especially while they were in danger. And, though she tried to stifle it, the _joy_ , of what it had felt like to be held, kissed, touched with tenderness—no, not those things, not just those things on their own, but—the joy at being tenderly touched by _him._ The confusion and the hurt at how he had turned her away, _it isn’t right,_ knowing it to be true but knowing equally that she wished it weren’t, how she wished [for once, the first in all the time she had been part of the Inquisition] to do something she knew to be wrong. [ _That burden—!_ ] And close on the heels of all those things, snapping its jaws, the crushing, gnawing guilt and shame. That she had woken and her thoughts had been of Solas and his generous mouth and not, instead, of the raven that carried Cullen’s orders to the troops near Ansburg, the soldiers who may or may not deliver her family from peril.)

Twigs crunching underfoot as they walked the mountain path, and she, searching still for the words. Thanduwen parted her lips, hesitant, turned her eyes away from him before she spoke. "I thought we should... talk about what happened, last night."

"Ahh," Solas hummed. "Well, to begin, I think I should apologize."

“Apologize?" Her eyes narrowed, suspicious despite herself; deep in the throes of her own self-deprecation, it seemed clear to her that she was the only one between the two of them guilty of any wrongdoing.

"The kiss was... ill considered," Solas said, turning to face her. "I should not have encouraged it. It has been a long time, and things have always been easier for me, in the Fade. It will not happen again.”

It was exactly what she needed to hear, if not what she had wanted. Because sometimes it is easier to say what is definitively _not_ than it is to say what _is._ And that kiss ( _teeth clicking, mind numbing, body singing sweetness_ ) had _not_ been ill considered, and had she been in his place, she most certainly _would_ have encouraged it. Despite everything else she felt, this much became astoundingly clear to her: selfish and ill-advised though it may be, kissing Solas was something she had done for herself. A small concession, a moment of clarity, all her titles (Herald, Inquisitor— _First_ ) falling away and leaving her with an equally small (but no less meaninful) truth: 

That she wanted him.

That he made her feel happy, safe—radiant.

They shouldn’t have, and they shouldn’t again. She knew it as surely as she knew her name. But that did not change how she felt, what she knew to be equally true: that she did not regret it. 

“And what if I want it to?” Thanduwen asked finally, quietly, unable to look at him. “Happen again.”

The rhythm of Solas’ stride faltered. He took a moment before he responded; when he did, his voice was low, his words carefully measured. “I would caution against that.”

“Why is that?” Thanduwen replied, knowing already her own reasons. Wanting to know his all the same.

“It could lead to trouble. For both of us.”

“We’re good at getting out of trouble.”

“Maybe not this kind,” Solas said, and she did not miss the note of remorse in his tone. “You and I…” he turned to look at her, the corners of his mouth twitching with thoughts unvoiced, beginnings without endings. Finally, he said simply, struggling his shoulders lightly in defeat, “There are considerations.”

That flickering mouth, and the knot between his eyebrows—it helped, a little, these visible signs that he too was torn. It softened the blow of the rejection, and it made what came next a little bit easier. Because while she was prepared (against her better judgement [they _shouldn’t_ —]) to throw caution and concern to the mountain wind and kiss him a second, a third, a fourth and fifth time, she would not ask the same of him. An (in)auspicious beginning: she would not have him unless he was wholly willing.

“San,” she said, softly, lifting her chin, staring forward, trying to appear dignified, even as he pushed her away. 

Solas came to a halt beside her. “San?” he asked, sounding more than a bit bewildered.

Thanduwen sighed, folded her arms protectively over her chest, contemplated the twigs broken on the dirt path beneath them.

“I don’t want to push you into something you’re uncomfortable with,” she said. When she turned her eyes up from the ground to meet his, there was something assertive in them. “Obviously my position within the Inquisition makes this complicated. And the truth is…” and her gaze softened here, “I rely upon you too much to jeopardize our relationship by trying to talk you into something you don’t want. Your advice, your kindness, your knowledge; these things are too important to me to risk, even if it is for the sake of…” and here she smiled, playfully, “…more excellent, intense, fiery kisses.”

There was a curious look on Solas’ face when she finished: skeptical eyes, uncertain brows, amused mouth. Through his own tempest of indecision, he managed, “Are you trying to flatter me into submission?”

She laughed low; the laugh receded into a hum. “That would suggest my praise is insincere. It is not.”

He gave a low, rumbling sound of amusement; he was looking at her with something indecisive and dark ( _she’d seen that look, right before he shook his head, reached for her, pulled her to him_ ) but it was gone in the next moment. He blinked, breathed deep, turned to her possessed of his self-restraint. But that did not stop him from reach out for her, his long fingers pinching a strand of dark hair and pushing it delicately out of her face.

“It is not simply a matter of what I do or do not want,” Solas said, quietly.”I ask only for time, to consider more fully the repercussions.”

“You’ll have it.” Simple, easy, to give him the space he needed; especially when she was due to depart for Crestwood soon. 

“But…” he said slowly, and he turned his eyes away from her, out to the bare trees, “it is a lovely, brisk morning.” A grin gracing his lips as he repeated her earlier words. He turned to her, kind, chaste, thankful. “If there is anything you wish to discuss, I would enjoy talking, and continuing our walk. Your advisors, I think, will not miss you for some time yet.”

The smile that split her face was as bright as the sun on the snow. “I’d like that.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just kiss already you idiots. 
> 
> Translations:  
> Tael | Second.  
> Vallasdahlen | Life-Trees. Planted in remembrance of those who dedicated their lives to the Dalish kingdom  
> San | Okay
> 
> thx as always to fenxshiral and Project Elvhen


	13. The Rains of Crestwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: NSFW (some sexuality— fairly brief, but worth a warning)

 "A silver badger on a field of blue is the heraldry of which noble house?"

"House Corallion."

"Good! You got that one wrong last time. Ahh, but the next is an easy one: purple is exclusively reserved for the heraldry of which High House?"

“Imperial House Valmont, keepers of the throne since the Exalted Age, and House of Empress Celene the Lionesse."

“Excellent! Though that one was so easy it hardly merits praise… this one is a bit more difficult. House Chanson and House D’Opaline were united by the marriage of which two nobles?” 

Thanduwen looked plaintively at Dorian across the library table. She held her arms outstretched on the table’s surface, hands twisted together. As she tried to remember the names of the nobles, she screwed her face up in concentration (and frustration); this was the part of her studies that she always struggled with most. Colors, banners, motifs—those were easy. She had a keen memory for visual patterns. But names? Marriages? Shifting titles and interlaced family lineages? She couldn't have cared less about them, and trying to keep track of them all was as difficult for her as it was uninteresting. 

Josephine had been kind enough to get a list of those who had been invited to Empress Celene's ball (and compiled a list of those who would likely be in attendance anyway: those who had been deliberately slighted by not receiving an invitation, those who were expected to attend as “plus ones,” companions in tow of those nobles who had been deemed important enough to receive one.) And so it had fallen to Dorian and Vivienne—even though the event was still many months away—to instruct Thanduwen on all the nuances of the Orlesian court in preparation for her society debut as Inquisitor. 

“If what you saw in the future is true,” Dorian had said, cornering her in the library one afternoon several weeks past, “you’ll be going to Orlais—and not just Orlais, but the Winter Palace. And you absolutely cannot go to Halamshiral the way you are now, I won't allow it—nor, I suspect, will Madame de Fer. If you go as you are now, they’ll eat you alive. It would be like throwing a baby fennec to a wyvern.”

The comparison had offended her at the time, but once her instruction had begun it became increasingly clear how apt it was. She knew nothing about _shemlen_ society, nothing of their manners, or of the thousand ways she might have accidentally slighted them with the wrong gesture. So, when she had time, she was entrusted into the tutelage of Dorian and Vivienne, who were doing their best to instruct her on every nuance, nicety, and detail that might come up when she attended the ball in Bloomingtide. 

It was, by far, her least favorite of all the responsibilities she held as Inquisitor, though she recognized the necessity of it. Of course the company made it more bearable. Especially because, in the time since they'd met at Redcliffe, she and Dorian had become very close. 

Thanduwen sighed dramatically, kissed her forehead to the table in defeat. "I can't remember, give me the answer."

Dorian tsked in disapproval. “Marquis du Firmin and the Baroness du Cannes. Andraste’s knickers, Wendy, how is it that you can conjure up obscure verses of the Canticle of Threnodies from memory after hearing it only a handful of times, but you can't remember this?"

“Firstly, they rhyme,” Thanduwen said, almost indignant, “and secondly, they are _far_ more useful for me to remember.”

"This will be useful too," Dorian insisted, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. "You'll be at a distinct disadvantage at the Ball—you must know that, don’t you? Walking into that court with your _vallaslin_ and your pointed ears. You will have to work twice as hard to have your presence acknowledged, never mind respected. But drop a few obscure facts like these into conversation and you'll have those masked devils eating out of the palm of your hand by the night’s end, I guarantee it."

"I'd rather them not," she frowned, placing her fingers delicately on the embossed leather cover of the book on the table—a record of the family trees of Orlais—and pushing it back across the table, towards Dorian. Then she leaned back in her own chair, crossed her legs (mirroring Dorian’s posture) and raised a hand, pinning the bridge of her nose. She felt a headache coming on. “Honestly after Val Royeaux I've had my fill of Orlais."

"Well, my dear, you haven't much of a choice so you may as well be prepared.” He was chastising her, but the affection in his voice rang clear as a bell all the same. “And you're lucky: you're studying with me today. When you leave for Crwtwood tomorrow, you'll be stuck with Madame de Fer, and I imagine she is far less kind as a tutor."

"Actually she's brilliant," Thanduwen replied. "You may forget because of how gracefully and effortlessly she carries herself but unlike you, who has been saturated in all this nonsense from birth, Vivienne had to learn it all herself. She remembers what it's like to find it all so opaque and ridiculous, and to have to know it all the same. No offense,” she added hastily.

"Hmm," Dorian said, sulkily. His mustache twitched. “If I know Madam de Fer, I doubt she found it _ridiculous._ She was drawn to the court—unlike you, she wanted to be there. Though I suppose your right in some regard. But I doubt she has my charm."

Thanduwen grinned. ”In that, you are unparalleled."

"It is good to have a friend in someone who recognizes greatness when they see it." He beamed back at her for a moment, before his expression sobered. “So what do you expect to find? In Crestwood?"

“Hopefully? Hawke’s Warden friend. But its hard to say what else to expect. Since the Breach, no one’s had any word from the village there.”

 

 

 

What she did find: rain, Wardens, rifts, undead.  

It was impossible to keep anything dry. The rain was not heavy, but it was persistent; twenty minutes exposed to the elements was all it took to soak her hood through to her hair. And it was _cold_ , still only the first days of Haring at the closing of the year.

(They were lucky, she supposed, that they were not being snowed upon.) 

Hawke’s friend had only just escaped the Grey Wardens who were pursuing him. Blackwall spotted them on their first day in the small village by the dim glow of their armor in the rain, and the distinctive shape of their helms. The sight of them—unnerving, so close to where Hawke’s friend was hiding—was still less alarming than the bloated corpses rising out of the lake, flesh sagging, soggy, and the _smell_ of them, Creators. It rivaled even the smell that had been coming off the corpses in the Fallow Mire, and that had been a _bog_. 

They were coming out of the lake; or, more specifically, the green blossoming in the center of the lake, unfolding over the water’s tempestuous surface like a lotus flower.

This was _not_ what she had planned for. She had hoped to be in Crestwood only briefly, to find the Warden and return to Skyhold. She was eager to return to the task of destroying Corypheus, and recovering his orb; those, she believed, were the primary goals of the Inquisition. 

But she also knew they weren’t the only goals. The Inquisition had been formed, to her mind, to protect people, to help them when their own despots would not (or could not), too much at a loss, or too engrossed in their own petty political squabbles to care for small fishing towns like Crestwood. Destroying Corypheus was a part of that, but it was only a small part. She could not summon enough hardness in her heart to abandon these people, even with other pressing matters awaiting her attention back in the Frostbacks. 

Even if the weather was miserable.

 

 

 

Of course, it was difficult, what with all the fisherman’s huts and docked boats and nets, to not be reminded of Wycome. 

She’d never been inside the city’s walls, of course—Keeper Deshanna had always insisted the mages remain with the Clan, away from the eyes of predatory Templars—but this is what she imagined it to be like from what she had been able to see from a distance, and from the way the hunters and archers in her Clan had described it: a rocky shoreline, lined with tiny boats moored to ramshackle docks.

And though it caused her to feel no small amount of guilt, whenever she thought of Wycome (when she thought of Clan Lavellan, and the danger they were in, and the lack of news from Cullen’s troops) she would turn to Vivienne.

Before she left Skyhold, she had thought that without Solas to distract her, she would be overwhelmed with thoughts of her Clan, anxiety that descended into grief, even though as far as she knew no harm had yet come to them. But Vivienne had proved just as good at distracting her as Solas was. She kept a sharp eye on Thanduwen—a gaze that, with anyone else, Thanduwen might have called protective. And whenever she caught Thanduwen with that distant look in her eyes (Vivienne called it “navel-gazing”) she’d turn to her and resume drilling her on her studies for the Bloomingtide Ball.

She did not like memorizing genealogies, baronships, titles; but what she did enjoy (and this was an exercise Vivienne put far more emphasis on than Dorian) was when Vivienne would role-play with her, giving her a chance to practice answering questions that might come up in the Court. “What will the Inquisition do with the Templars who have not yet abandoned their posts?” And learning how to diplomatically say many things at the same time, how to craft an answer that could mean both yes and no, allowing the inquirer to derive whatever assurance they were looking for from her response without making a clear commitment.

“You are very good at this, dear,” Vivienne had said, one dreary and damp afternoon in a rare moment of praise. “If only you applied yourself to the memorization as much as these exercises.”

“It’s not the same. This is different.” She liked this, playing with words: twisting them, shaping them. If it had been to manipulate anyone else, she might have felt guilty, but she felt no remorse in learning how to beguile Orlesians, who she had been raised from birth to resent for their Exalted Marches—for how they had washed the Dales with the blood of her people. 

Their mark had been left upon this land, too; Thanduwen was told that the fortress that dominated the landscape had been built to protect against the colonial ambitions of Orlesians during the Blessed Age, when they had sought (once more) to claim land that rightfully belonged to Ferelden. And the Blessed Age was not very long ago at all.

 

 

 

 

 _Can I ask you something?_ she’d said, towards the end of their walk, on the morning after their kiss in the Fade; she and Solas had been returning to the castle, and the sun was already high in the sky, warming their faces, even in early winter.

 _Anything,_ Solas had responded (and at the time, she had believed him.)

_Even if we don’t… if we decide against pursuing whatever it is between us. Can we still— will you show me more of the Fade?_

He looked at her appraisingly out of the corner of his eye. _Is that something you would want?_

 _Yes. Of course. I mean, if you think you can resist me,_ punctuated with a sly grin, _keep your tongue out of my mouth while we’re there._ _I really enjoyed it. Not the kissing—well, the kissing was excellent—you are_ very _good at it—but I enjoyed the other bits, too. Being in the Fade with you. I want to see it in the way that only you can show me. No matter what you decide._

 _You continue to surprise me. But to answer your question, yes, I think I can manage to guide you through the Fade and maintain a sense of propriety._ He paused then, tapped his forefinger on his chin in a playful gesture of consideration, before tilting his head and asking, _What will you give me in return?_

Anything you’d ask of me. _What would you ask of me?_

And that is how she came to be scrambling over the boulders on the coast of Lake Calenhad: Vivienne looking appalled that she’d so willingly clamber over the slimy rocks and risk a tumble into the corpse-bloated lake for the sake of pigments; Blackwall trying very hard not to show how concerned he was that she _would_ fall and crack her head (she would have either laughed at him or scolded him); and Varric, looking at her with a knowing grin while he took shelter under an overhang on the cliffs. She blinked through the pouring rain, drops clinging to her chin, and there— _aha_ —

_It grows on the south-facing side of large boulders. It’s a spindly little thing. Hair thin and brittle. A handful should suffice. If you bring me some of this back, it will make the most subtle and lovely purple color…. for the mural._

She tested her footing on the boulders, just to be certain of her footholds, then rummaged through one of the pouches at her waist, pulled out a small knife. Pried the lichens off the boulder to bring home to him, the _artist._  

 

 

 

Red Templars on the road to the Warden’s hideout. And though their were many things that she was waiting to address until after they made contact with Hawke’s Warden—the rift in the lake, clearing the fortress ( _Caer Bronach_ , the Mayor had called it) of the bandits occupying it, the dragon in the Black Fens—she would make an exception for Red Templars. She was practiced, by now, in dealing with them—it would be only a brief delay.

She had been wrong: afterwards, in their camp, a letter: _There’s a small ruin. Copy down any writing you see. Samson’s orders._

But why were the Red Templars looking for elven ruins? What were they expecting—or hoping—to find? Again, she felt Solas’ absence keenly. It was unlikely he was familiar with the ruins nearby, or why it was that the Templars sought them, but he would have been a welcome partner with which to discuss the Templar’s motivations for seeking it out.

Even after the Templars were dead, then, they lingered, though both Blackwall and Varric wanted to press on. Thanduwen studied the statues on the hill, the owl of Falon’Din, and the wolf, Fen’Harel. But statues of Fen’Harel were often found on the _outside_ of temples and cities, as a guardian to scare away trespassers—they were not yet in the heart of the ruins.

Which is what led them into the cave.

“Should’ve let the Templars deal with the wyvern before we killed them,” Varric said, hoisting Bianca on his shoulder and wiping wyvern blood off his face. It had not been an easy beast to kill, only stumbling into stillness after Vivienne and Thanduwen had stunned it into submission, and Blackwall had delivered one last bone-cracking blow to its head. But Thanduwen was not listening.

She was gazing up at the crude paintings on the rocks, paintings of elves riding to war. Elves sagging and bent under a burning sun. A dragon, painted in black beneath the waterfall—one she had not seen before. The other motifs were familiar. She saw crude paintings much in the same style across many of the places they had travelled. But the dragon, that was unique. And its placement, half-concealed by the falling water, was curious. Especially when the shape of the rock suggested it had originally been painted that way, half concealed behind a shimmering curtain, and not that the water had been directed in that direction afterwards.

And then, above: weaving between the legs of one of the stone harts that crowned the space, she caught sight of it: the white wolf, peering at her. Thanduwen only looked back. It no longer alarmed her, but she couldn’t ignore it, pretend she didn’t see it. 

She did not know why she trusted Tanaleth…. 

She wished Solas was here. He would know more about these ruins, why they might be of value to Corypheus. She supposed if the orb was elven, it was possible he was looking for other elven artifacts to aid him in his quest. That wounded her, a pain that twisted in her in a way that felt at once very personal and at the same time much bigger than herself. Would she live to see the day when Tevinter ceased to claim the ancient culture and technology of Arlathan for their own imperious ends? Pillaging ruins they razed, appropriating the power and grace of a long-dead empire. When would those days run out?

But she was here. And the presence of the wolf here too, though she knew not why, felt like a reassurance: that she was supposed to be here. It seemed to mean that this place was special, important somehow, even if she didn’t yet understand why.

In any case, the Templars search would have come up empty. They tarried overlong in the ruins, but Thanduwen could not find any elven writing at all, save one rune, illuminated by Veilfire, on the cave’s west-facing wall. She copied it best she could, made notes of the impression it gave her (Solas had always been quick to say that, gone unread for so long, the runes _needed_ to be understood, unreal if they were unread. They reached out to you, stretching through language to press meaning upon those who saw them) then tucked the parchment away, sealing it against the water as best she could with a simple but useful spell of impermeability she had learned from her Clan, before returning to the road.

 

 

 

“I intercepted a message from a Warden who is pursuing me. They will be gathering in the Western Approach, in one month’s time.” 

Alistair Theirin’s words—and she should have been humbled, amazed, but a part of her (of which she was somewhat ashamed) was disappointed that it was him, and not the Hero of Ferelden. She had never considered that Hawke’s Warden friend might be a veteran of the Fifth Blight, but if she had, she would have hoped for it to be the Hero. She had been raised on stories of his deeds. He was no longer Dalish—not really, having left that life behind at the start of the Blight—but he was still revered among the Clans. And she would have much liked to have been able to speak to him about that. How he reconciled his Dalish identity with his new one as a Warden. What it had felt like, to leave home, knowing that he would not return.

 

 

 

On the fourth day she woke in Crestwood—the day after she met Alistair—they seized Caer Bronach. 

Hawke had stayed at Varric’s behest. _When was the last time we kicked the shit out of some lowlifes together?_ And if Thanduwen had asked, she knew Hawke would have had no reservations denying the request; but Hawke could not say no to Varric. A smile had curled her lips at Varric’s suggestion, the curve of nostalgia, memories of ass-kickings delivered across Kirkwall alongside her greatest friends, now far-flung and distant… Alistair had stayed by extension, as he and Hawke were due to journey west together the morning after.

So the six of them had stormed the Keep, and when the Highwaymen were slain, they had dragged their bodies out of the fortress and pillaged their supplies. There was enough in the way of vegetables and meat for them to make a fairly hearty soup; it was the first decent meal many of them had had in weeks. 

They even managed to find a few bottles of a strange ale Thanduwen had not tasted before. It was an unusual mix of flavors that went straight to the head. She could tell from the first sip it would leave her head aching come morning, but that did not stop her from taking a second. Behind the fortresses walls she felt safe—and there was enough shelter that she knew tonight she would sleep in a dry place, which was a welcome change from the nights prior. 

By nightfall, they were gathered merrily around a fire, sheltered from the rain by Caer Bronach’s stone walls. Alistair and Vivienne were trading stories. Varric and Hawke were teaching Blackwell songs they used to hear in the Mirkwall tavern where they would gather in the evenings, before the city fell to chaos. It was, considering the circumstances that had brought them all together, a festive gathering, despite the dire circumstances that had brought them together. At some point, Alistair remarked that it reminded him of nights spent camped in the wilderness of Ferelden during the Blight. And, for perhaps the first time since they left Skyhold, Vivienne was not drilling her on obscure facts about the Orlesian court. 

Thanduwen was content to be on the periphery of those interactions—thankful, for once, not to be in the center of attention. She listened to Alistair’s stories, and joined in Varric’s song in equal measure (as a Free Marcher herself, she was occasionally familiar with the melodies if not the words to the songs they were teaching Blackwall.)

But every so often she would look up and find Hawke looking at her, giving her a hard, pensive stare. She tried not to let it bother her. There were any number of reasons for it, their fates running close in parallel together; after all, Hawke knew as well as Thanduwen did that the only reason she held the title of Inquisitor was because Hawke had rejected it. 

But as the last light faded on the western horizon, and the stars began to glimmer, Hawke rose, stretched. "Will you walk with me?” she said, looking at Thanduwen that suggested it was less a question and more of a demand. “There's something I'd like to discuss."

"Ahh, come on Hawke, that sounds serious,” Varric said. “I was going to teach Blackwell ‘The Hills of Wildervale’ next. I need you to help me teach him the call and response sections."

"Don't worry, Varric," Thanduwen said with a grin, rising from her seat at the fire. "We won't be gone long,” she said, but remedied her promise a quick glance to Hawke— “I think."

Hawke only gave a noncommittal shrug, then gestured along the upper walls of Caer Bronach that overlooked the lake. They set out along them. 

The rain was still falling, but it had lessened to a light mist. Had it not been cold, the soft fall of the precipitation might have been pleasant. Still, it was the most bearable weather they'd had since they arrived, with the wind calm and the rain falling downwards instead of slanting sideways, a searching kind of rain, trickling between seams and into boots and leaving everything in its path soggy. 

They walked in silence to the tower where they had hung the banner of the Inquisition, kindly provided by Scout Harding—ever the optimist—when they had left camp that morning. Thanduwen could hear the muffled sound it made as the wind moved through it, rippled along its edges. From here, they had a clear view of the rift in the lake, undulating and luminous.

But Hawke was not looking at it. Instead, she pointed south, along the lakeshore. “Less than a week’s walk that way, and you’d find Kinloch Hold. It’s the headquarters for Ferelden’s Circle.” 

She had heard that name before; it was familiar, but Thanduwen wasn’t sure why. She did not know why Hawke was mentioning it now. “I’ve heard of it,” was all she managed, lamely, staring at Hawke’s back. Unlike Thanduwen, Hawke wore no hood; the red curls of her hair hung damp and loose, dripping with rainwater.

“Did you know your Commander was stationed there, during the Fifith Blight?” Hawke asked, and Thanduwen could tell she was trying to keep her tone of voice casual, but she was failing; beneath her words, there was a barely concealed sneer. 

“He’s probably mentioned it,” Thanduwen said, hesitant. “We… mostly argue, when its the two of us. We don’t talk very much about his past assignments.”

Hawke chuckled, but the sound was mirthless. “I can’t imagine why not,” she said, dryly, before she turned back to Thanduwen. “All the more reason for us to chat, then. I didn’t want to say anything when I met you in Skyhold; I could have been Inquisitor, if I had fancied, and having decided not to, it didn’t seem my place to give you advice on what you should or should not do. But the more I have thought about it since, the more I have regretted my silence. I am… thankful, for the opportunity to speak to you now.”

Thanduwen crossed her arms over her chest, shrugged, shifted her weight between her feet. “I haven’t heard a lot about what happened in Kirkwall. Most of the people who were there… they are reluctant to talk about it, and I don’t blame them,” and that was true. But she had still be surprised by it. The roots of the war stretched far back through time, but many said the Mage-Templar conflict had begun in Kirkwall. And yet, despite how the events that had transpired there had led to the Conclave, no one who had been there—not Cullen, not Leliana, not even Varric—seemed to want to tell her much about it, despite how useful that information might have been. “From what I have heard, you did right by the mages there. I respect the decisions you made; it can’t have been easy. Whatever is troubling you… I can’t promise I’ll do anything about it before I hear you out, but I will listen.”

“Spoken humbly, as though you haven’t already accomplished as much yourself,” Hawke said, favoring Thanduwen with a rare smile—she hadn’t seen Hawke smile at anyone else other than Varric. “Rescuing the southern mages from enslavement in Tevinter, choosing to work with them as _partners—_ I suppose, as a mage yourself, you understand—and your accomplishments at Haven…” her voice trailed off. A grimace twitched across her features, before she licked her lips hastily, considering her words. “That is why when I saw what I saw I… I couldn’t quite believe it. It is clear to me now that you didn’t know, that no one has told you, not even Varric. Which, thought I understand—that makes sense, for him, not to wish to stir the pot—it disappoints me.”

Thanduwen’s brow furrowed. There were few things she liked less than the idea the people she had no choice but to trust were keeping secrets from her. “What didn’t I know?”

“No one’s told you anything about Cullen, have they?” Hawke said, her expression a mix of a pity and fury. “You bring these mages in to protect them, so that they can fight alongside you, and you have…” she sighed, scoffed. “I can’t think of anyone less qualified and less appropriate for the job than Cullen. Well,” she added as an afterthought, “anyone I left _alive._ ”

And so Hawke told her (and given Cullen’s resume, it was not a brief talk): the years she had spent in Kirkwall, the cruelty Cullen had shown to her and her family, the invocation of the Right of Annulment in not only Kirkwall but Kinloch as well, the way that wherever Cullen went he left dead mages in his wake. How frequently he had advocated for the use of the Rite of Tranquility. How severely he had tried to punish those Templars who had shown sympathy to the mages—those who had tried to help them escape. And it began, suddenly, to make sense: Leliana’s condescension to him (for she had always sympathetic to the plight of the mages), Cullen’s refusal to work with Fiona, the _look_ on his face—horrified—when she’d made a pledge to help them in Skyhold’s courtyard, the day she had become the Inquisitor. The way the mages _whispered_ around him, not merely because he was a Templar but because of the stories that the mages of Kirkwall had taken with them into exile, spread among the refugees as a cautionary tale. That she had put those people—people she had worked so hard to free, people she wanted to feel safe—under _his care._ She was revolted with herself, and she was furious with Leliana and Cassandra and Varric for letting her go so long without knowing. 

_How in all of Creation had Cassandra and Leliana thought he was the best fit for his job—?_

And she could not feel the chill of the rain, ceased to feel the looming threat of the rift blushing in the lake, as Hawke went on, and on—the many mages Cullen had fought to make Tranquil, how he had defended Meredith right until the end, until it became clear that it was no longer politically convenient to do so—and all she could think of was that mage they had found by the docks on the first day in Crestwood, on their way to the village, corpse sprawled across the pebbles, water logged, a sword in her back. They had found her journal. She had only been trying to help….

How many mages, she wondered, would have faced the same fate in the Inquisition, if the Commander had his way?

 

 

 

That night, she dreamt of death: the premonition of it upon her, like the touch of a clammy hand, or the stench of its breath. 

For every Warden in Orlais was hearing the calling—even Alistair. Even Blackwall, though he had said nothing about it before now. Every Warden in Orlais, feeling the Blight closing in on them, close to claiming them, whispers in dreams and sinister songs upon waking. 

She had felt what that was like, the claustrophobia (and then the freedom) of feeling her own ending. Climbing up the mountainside after the tunnels beneath Haven spat her out into the storm, how she’d been cold past feeling, steps clumsy as her feet grew numb, as the numbness climbed up her legs. What it felt like: the certainty that death was close, the elimination of possibility, like a thousand doors slammed shut. Pathways forever closed to her, and counting up what she’d done, trying to measure a life. Wondering whether it had been ill spent. Wondering what she might have done differently, done better.

She pitied the Wardens. She was furious at the path they had turned to in their desperation, the acts they would carry out in their foolishness. But she understood—better than she would like to—what one is capable of when pressed, when confronted with the end of all things.

 

 

 

Hawke and Alistair left the next morning, as dawn was just breaking across the sky, the sun’s light softened by the fog rolling in off the lake. 

And where last night the rain had been soft, it had returned in the early morning with a vengeance: it poured. Sometimes the road would get so wet, and the rain so hard, that it was all they could to but take shelter from it against some rock face, in some cave. It was times like this, when she was wet and freezing and miserable, that Vivienne—relentless as always—would press her.

“In what year did Emperor Kordillus Drakon write the Canticle of Exaltations?”

Or, “Recite each of the aristocratic titles, beginning with the most prestigious, and each of their appropriate terms of address.”

Or, “When greeting someone of higher rank, you bow; someone one lower rank, extend your hand. What is the appropriate way to greet someone of equal rank?”

With each onslaught of questions, Thanduwen must have looked increasingly miserable; after some time, Vivienne began to take pity on her. Her expression softened. Once, as they were waiting at the door of the Rusted Horn for the rain to clear, she placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, meant to comfort.

“I am sorry to be so persistent with you, my dear. But you must know that in Orlais, all it will take is one glance for every member of the Imperial Court to consider you _less than._ Whether by your staff, or your pointed ears, or the marks upon your face, they will find a reason to discredit you before you have even opened your mouth. Unfair though it may be, this much is fact: you will have to be twice as clever, twice as graceful, twice as genteel before they will listen to what you have to say; thrice as witty to earn any respect at all. But I will mold you into the sort of person who can succeed in the Court, I will give you the skills that will keep you safe, and give you the upper hand. In this, I will not fail you.

And in any case, it does help keep ones mind off the ghastly weather.”

 

 

 

But there were other distractions to be had, beyond court role-play and rote memorization.

In her tent, the lashing of the rain against the canvas walls masked the sound of her uneven breathing. Her fingertips ghosted across the flesh of her thighs, her abdomen, still damp with the day’s rain. She thought of Solas....

She shouldn’t—she knew this. It had been more than a fortnight since their shared excursion into the Fade, and the kiss they'd shared there. She knew Solas needed time to think, and she would not begrudge him that. She suspected her trip without him to Crestwood would give him some of the time and space to consider that he had asked for. But even though they had not spoken of it since, even though she had told no one, she could not get the kiss out of her head. 

She had remembered it so many times she had no doubt she was losing her perspective; each time recalled, his hands became a bit stronger, his tongue more insistent, his yearning more palpable. She had always found him attractive but never permitted herself the thoughts of what it would be like to kiss him until she had and now it was as if the floodgates in her mind keeping all those lascivious thoughts back had broke and she could not stop the barrage of lurid imaginings coming to mind. 

And she shouldn’t—she knew she shouldn’t. There was every chance Solas would conclude—perhaps rightly—that it would be unwise to pursue this budding romance between them, that she would return to Skyhold and seek him and instead of welcoming her he would call the whole thing off. And each time she remembered his lips pressed against hers, that possibility became more and more painful, more difficult to bear. And yet...

And yet it had only been five months but they had been filled with such anxiety and anguish. Other things too, tiny pleasures, pinpricks shining brightly despite such darkness. 

But the lust that seized her now was _new_ and fresh and a welcome change; a rebellion and a revelation at once. It was good to feel something different. Something simple. Something she understood and had a remedy for. Base and uncomplicated—just desire, as old as time. 

As the rain raged against the tent’s walls her hand traced a lazy path between her breasts down her abdomen, through the thick, dark curls of hair at her groin. She thought of the way he'd looked at her and arched into her touch. Closing her eyes. Biting her lip as she thought of the hunger with which he'd pursued her, hand tracing lower between the folds of her sex, circling….

…the weight of all her responsibilities falling away, receding, as she fell into the headiness of the pleasure she gave herself—what would _his_ touch be like? Long fingers, and the freckles on his forearms, imagining the light falling across his bare back—her breath hitched at the image, fingers pressing more urgently between her legs, stroking her clit—and the thought—each of her thighs spread on either side of his waist, and the look he would wear on his face, head tilted back, cords of his neck tight—the soft ‘o’ of his mouth—what sounds would he make?—as she would rise and fall over him, fingers splayed on his chest to steady herself, seeking her own pleasure as much as his as she rolled her hips against his—watching the muscles of his abdomen convulse, and the press of him inside of her—insistent—crashing—

his name, like a plea,  _Solas_

—soared into the white abyss of her climax, where everything was nothing but tight and coiled until it wasn’t, unspooling, the bliss of that blankness in her mind. 

And falling into sleep—deeper and more restful than it had been for many nights.

 

 

 

 

The next day, along the newly unearthed shoreline of the lake, she paused—“Wait,”—and closed her eyes, felt a humming, a vibrating at the edges of her perception. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt it, but it was the first time she’d had to rely on her own ability to catch it, without Solas around to aid her. 

The fingers on her left hand, shaking. The anchor thrumming. With her eyes closed, it was easier to feel it, faint but certain. It was... strange, the signature of that arcane energy. Like the anchor was reaching out to it, a plaintive song that suddenly was answered by a gentle voice, _yes, yes, I am here_. Two things stretching, reaching towards one another.

Like a hand, groping in the dark….

She could barely feel it with the anchor; she could only imagine how present and mindful Solas must be to be able to feel it on his own. She supposed that had to do with how much time he'd spent to the Fade, the same kind of sensitivity that allowed him to feel the strength of the Veil. 

She was aware of how ridiculous she must have looked, standing in the rain with her eyes closed, waving her hand around her in wide arcs, twitching her fingers. Though she could not see them, she heard Blackwall grumble something, before Vivienne promptly shushed him with a dramatic hiss. 

Thanduwen followed the feeling closer to the shore, praying she would not have to wade into the lake; before she reached the water her hand began to shake more severely, and she could hear, over the lapping of the water and the pattering rain, a subtle hiss and crackle from the anchor. When she opened her eyes she was standing outside a decimated house, the roof had half-caved, held up now by only a few of the original posts. 

But there, along the path of a crumbling stone wall and half-submerged in sediment, she saw it.

Despite herself, she couldn’t help but beam with pride. Yet when she turned back to face her companions, none of them seemed to share her enthusiasm. Blackwall looked confused; Varric looked uneasy. Vivienne was the least alarmed of the three of them, but she was eyeing Thanduwen with a cool, calculating stare.

“Uhh, how did you…did you hear that?” Varric asked, his voice incredulous as he walked down the shore to Thanduwen’s side.

“I don’t think I heard it so much as I felt it,” she responded. She tried to keep her voice cheerful, upbeat—tried to ease his concern.

Varric stood at her side a few feet from the artifact. He’d been near a half-dozen of them in the Hinterlands, but now that she was able to detect them herself (instead of relying on Solas) he seemed wary of it, unwilling to get much closer. His hands were on his hips. “It’s been underwater since the Blight. No guarantee it will work.”

But Thanduwen suspected otherwise. “Only one way to find out,” she said, stepping forward, reaching out with her left hand towards the surface of the artifact. Under the lightest of touches—her fingertips barely brushed the surface of the cool, damp metal—it bloomed with light.

Vivienne appeared at Varric’s side, her expression impossible to read. She scrutinized the artifact, the spectral halo around it that revolved and hummed. “What did Solas claim this artifact does?” she asked. Her tone sounded innocuous enough, but Thanduwen knew better.

“He said it strengthened the Veil,” she replied, watching Vivienne. “Fortified the area against more tears in the future.”

“And what… evidence, did he cite?”

“None,” she replied, truthfully. “But we’ve had scouts stay in the Hinterlands and the Fallow Mire. Where we lit the artifacts, there have been no further rifts—or demons, or corpses.”

Vivienne’s reply was swift: “Do not mistake correlation for causation, my dear. Just because those areas have not seen continued rift activity, that does not necessarily mean the artifacts are the cause.” She pursed her lips, cast a glance in Thanduwen’s direction to feel out her reaction before she spoke again. “We should have Scout Harding requisition this artifact, have it returned to Skyhold. Have you met your new Arcanist, Dagna? She is, by all reports, quite capable and brilliant. Before we continue activating ancient magicks that we do not understand, it would be best to have her take a look at this artifact, and confirm its nature.”

Thanduwen did not like where this conversation was going—it felt awfully like going behind Solas’ back, disrespecting him while he was not around to defend himself. “I don’t know, Vivienne….”

“Inquisitor, as Court Enchanter, I must tell you that in all my years of study in the Circle, I have come across nothing that suggests such an artifact even exists, in practice or in theory.” Thanduwen opened her mouth to protest; Vivienne silenced her with an elegantly raised hand. “That does not mean it does not work as the apostate says. But it is imprudent and irresponsible to keep illuminating these beacons on the word of one man with no evidence to support his suggestion.”

Thanduwen was irritated, and uncomfortable. She felt (rightly so) that Vivienne was seizing upon the opportunity presented to her, taking advantage of Solas’ absence to bend the Inquisitor’s ear and sew doubts about the depth of his knowledge, and his motives. “You don’t trust him because he wasn’t trained in a circle,” Thanduwen said, but even that rebuke was half-hearted. For when she thought back to the time that they had encountered the first artifact with Mihris in the Hinterlands, she remembered that she had her own misgivings. That, at the time, she herself had questioned Solas—and how surprised and unprepared he was for that kind of dissent. In time, she had come to trust his theory because (as she had told Vivienne) the areas in the Hinterlands where they’d lit the artifacts did seem to be more stable. But it was also true that she had mostly continued to light them on faith alone.

“I don’t trust him, that is true, but that is immaterial to the point—as part of the Imperial Court, I dare not trust anyone,” Vivienne replied. “Solas has been right about many things so far, he even led us to Skyhold. But much about him and what he says has been impossible to confirm. This, at least, we may be able to. If it does something other than what Solas has suggested, then perhaps it was a mistake, but then we will know to stop toying with ancient arcane technology that we do not understand. And if does do as he says—if it thickens, or stabilizes the Veil—wouldn’t you want to see if the technology can be replicated? Then we could create a network of them—set them up at uniform distances from one another, light them as we go instead of having to rely on your…” and here she searched for a moment for the most diplomatic term, “ _uncanny_ ability to locate them.”

“If we take it back with us,” Thanduwen said, hesitantly, “and the Arcanist is able to prove that this artifact does exactly what Solas said it does, will you promise me that you will trust him a little more?”

“Trust cannot be bargained for, dear,” Vivienne said stiffly, amusement in her voice. “But should the Arcanist confirm his theory, I promise to treat his opinions with greater respect in the future. As I would to anyone who had somehow unearthed knowledge lost to even the most renowned of historians.”

 

 

 

Before they left the artifact by the shore, Vivienne had sent one of her spells high into the air, a magical flare that signaled to Scout Harding they had found something of importance. She had sent a pair of scouts stationed in Caer Bronach to investigate, but she had also followed the direction of the flare herself, recognizing Vivienne’s signal, her curiosity piqued. She came straight through Old Crestwoood. 

Thanduwen could tell something was wrong from the look on her face: a little green. As always she conducted herself with professionalism, nodding politely and asking for clarification as Vivienne described to her what they had found, and what the best (or rather, _safest_ ) way to ship such an artifact back to Skyhold. ( _Try to handle the artifact only by its base, make sure the crate is not knocked about on its journey to the Frostbacks, make note of any unusual behaviors you observe._ ) But beneath the veneer of professionalism Harding maintained as she listened to Vivienne, Thanduwen could sense something, an unease she was trying to stifle.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, Vivienne had concluded her instruction.

“The old village,” she responded, “I walked through it to get here. The shortest distance between two points, y’know? The smell was, ahh… _unique._ ”

“I can imagine,” Thanduwen replied. That certainly explained the nauseous look on her face. 

“But that’s not it,” Harding was quick to continue. “Inquisitor, in the village there are _demons._ Or, not demons, maybe? They didn’t attack me. They’re just kind of… floating.”

A few hours later, when Thanduwen arrived with the others, she saw them for herself—and Old Crestwood was full of them. Enough, certainly, to explain Scout Harding’s alarm. She could think of no other place they had visited, save perhaps in the future she had seen at Redcliffe, that was so densely populated with spirits. And she was at a loss to remember the last time she had seen spirits that were so docile.

They must have come through the rift, Thanduwen thought—but unlike the wisps that they found clustered near the tears in the Veil, these spirits were calm. They glowed a soft crimson as they drifted through the broken, toothpick structures that once were homes. And they seemed sad. She did not know how she perceived that—their supposed sadness—for after all, they hadn’t faces with expressions to read, and none of them spoke to her. It was more a _feeling_ than anything else. If she tried to describe it to Vivienne, she knew the Circle Mage would scoff at her, but still she felt it to be true. And she felt for them, creatures drawn through the Veil into a world they did not understand. 

She remembered what Solas had told her, of ancient Arlathan before the formation of the Veil. Did some of these spirits, she wondered, remember what the world had been like then? Were any of them old enough to have seen Thedas before the Veil had closed it off to them?

(Would they even recognize it, now, if they had?)

“Move, I said, I command it! Why does nothing listen?”

Command. And this creature—this spirit—a phantasmal form of curling red vapors, a flame beating in its breast. Hardly even a face to speak of but the expression, their emotion, their _intrigue_ was clear when (like a storm cloud) the spirit rose, drifted closer, tilted its head to the side. “You. I felt your coming. Is there something alike in us?”

Command did not frighten her, but that question did. For how was she to answer it? Within her, immediate, like jerking a hand back from a hot stove: _No, no, there is nothing alike in us._ The sensation was one of revulsion, but within her a mounting suspicion that there was more alike between them that she would admit. She was Inquisitor now, after all, and being Inquisitor seemed far more to do with commands than inquiries: commanding the direction of troops, the distribution and commandeering of resources, the declaration of victories. And, then, even more insidious, the fear that what Command saw in her had nothing to do with being Inquisitor: that even before all of this had happened to her, even as First, she had the seed of Command in her. Was it was a sense of duty and responsibility, or an inclination for control and despotism that made her so?

The question frightened her.

“All you sensed was the Anchor on my hand. But still, I will help you, if I can.”

 

 

 

The Caves beneath old Crestwood were lousy with walking corpses and demons, but it was the spirits that held her attention. Unlike Command, none of them spoke to her; none of them so much as looked at her. She thought at first that they were ignoring her, another immutable thing in a world of changeless forms. But the longer she spent among them—drifting wayward about the damp space of the caves, where each drip of water from the stalagmites above resounded—the more she began to think they were despondent, that they had surrendered to their aimlessness. They were trapped within a world they did not understand, and they did not know how to return home, to the Fade.

(That struck a chord within her—so far from home herself, and what she’d hoped she’d be.)

(Again, she longed for Solas.)

“When I close the Rift,” she asked Vivienne, eventually “what will happen to them? Do you think they will be able to get back through, to their home?” 

The way Vivienne looked at her, it was though the Circle mage thought her deranged for even asking the question. Then, with a dramatic lift of her eyebrows and a roll of her eyes, she said, “I don’t know, dear. But I think, with everything else going on, there are greater things for you to concern yourself with.”

 

 

 

“You miss him, don’t you?”

After closing the rift they had found themselves in a large architectural space—what had perhaps been once a market when this road between Thaigs was still in use. They had split up: Vivienne had taken Blackwall, and Thanduwen had paired off with Varric. They were combing the space, looking for an exit to the surface, and keeping their eyes sharp for any artifacts they might find and bring back to Skyhold with them: books, statuettes. Josephine was still trying to win the support of Orzammar; Vivienne had suggested that they might find a handsome gift of historical significance for King Bhelan in the ruins. 

And so, when Varric asked her the question, she was scanning the walls for an ornate tile she might pry free, and gazing into the murky water—halfway up their calves—for any necklace or weapon that might make a gift for a King. And when he asked her, she kept her eyes trained on the water below, determined not to look at him (afraid her face would reveal too much) and asked him innocently as she could manage, “What?”

Varric scoffed, in his good-natured way that made abundantly clear her ruse would not work on him. “I saw you. At the little cave, where we slayed the wyvern. Sighing dramatically, wordless… you were the very definition of ‘wistful.’ And you’re the same, down here, in the ruins. You miss him.”

“I’m not _wistful_ ,” she protested.

“Sure you are, Inquisitor,” Varric said, grinning. “This is exactly the kind of thing that you two would’ve loved. Huddled close, whispering esoteric shit to one another, making grandiose extrapolations about the use of the space based on minutiae… it’s okay to admit that you’ve grown fond of Chuckles.”

She wouldn’t admit he was right; in any case, he didn’t seem to need to hear her say it. He already knew. She sighed in defeat, then favored him with a goodnatured smile. “Well, I’ll try to be less _wistful_ Varric, for your sake if not my own. After all,” she said, turning her head to the feel of air moving through the space (there must have been a door nearby), “we’ll be home soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those interested, I have also written a short piece depicting Solas' time in Skyhold during Lavellan's absence, available to read here: [But That Glittering Seed](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11010249/chapters/27172380)


	14. These Millstones Around Our Necks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If someone had told her a year ago that her family would be saved by shemlen, she would have laughed at them. If someone had told her that it would be a Templar who would give the order that would save her Clan, she would have spat in their face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: foul/crass language (mostly in Elvish?), canon-divergent (arguably, wildly OOC, verging on AU) characterization of Cullen

They were announced at the gate by the trotting sound of hart’s hooves on stone, and the ringing of horns: _The Inquisitor has returned to her Keep._

But the sounds of welcome and rejoicing that echoed through the stronghold did nothing for Thanduwen’s mood. Instead she turned her eyes upwards as she guided her hart across the drawbridge, scrutinizing the many bodies on the walls above, searching for the man who had occupied her thoughts for the better part of the journey home.

 _Tranquil mages lining the Gallows like ghosts—preferable that way,_ compliant— _how many Rites had he himself ordered? Sitting blank in their cells, indifferent and unfeeling as they waited for the order to come from Val Royeaux that would endorse their mass slaughter. Was his face—unscarred, then—the last many had seen before being marched to a Harrowing from which they would not return?_

She had no excuse for the time before but her ignorance, and even in that, she felt culpable. But she was Inquisitor now—as Cassandra and Leliana had taken great pains to make clear, ambushing her in this very courtyard with the announcement—and it was her Inquisition. And there was no place within it for men like Cullen Rutherford. His time here had come to an end. 

Once through the gatehouse, several of Dennet’s stable boys rushed forward to assist them with their mounts. Thanduwen swung neatly out of her saddle before they even came close. She brought her hands to the saddle’s cinch and loosened it by a few inches—not enough to let the saddle slip off, but enough to give the hart some relief from its hold. She was eager for a word with the Commander, but not so eager that she would take for granted the effort and grace of the steed that had hastened her to this confrontation, all the many miles from Crestwood to the Frostbacks.

The grey hart whickered gently in gratitude. Thanduwen grinned, patted his shoulder before fishing in her pockets for the handful of dried berries she had saved for the stag as a treat. She lay her palm flat—she had been bitten too many times in the beginning not to learn by now—as the stag’s thick lips swept over her palm, tonguing the spaces between her fingers, sucking up every last piece of fruit. She gave him a scratch behind his ears, before handing the reins to one of Dennet’s boys. Ordinarily, she liked to groom and care for her mounts herself when they returned to Skyhold (she had insisted Dennet teach her how) but today, she had other business more pressing.

“Inquisitor!”

She turned; Lieutenant Peyton was standing behind her, at attention. He was one of Cullen’s most trusted lieutenants, but Thanduwen secretly suspected this was more because of his usefulness as an errand boy, and less because of any act of valor on his part. Even now, as he stood behind her, he seemed intimidated by her.

“At ease,” she said, nodding curtly in greeting, but before he could deliver his news, she cut him off, her tone sharp. “Where is Commander Rutherford? I need to speak with him immediately.”

The lieutenant stood there, simply gaping at her, struggling to come up with an answer to what Thanduwen thought was a fairly straightforward question. “He—he is…” Peyton gave a pained expression, winced, then looked to the Inquisitor apologetically. “He’s indisposed, Inquisitor. Ser.”

Thanduwen pursed her lips, raised an eyebrow at the soldier. “Lieutenant. Where is Commander Rutherford?”

She was looking for Cullen and had no patience for delay. The lieutenant’s reluctance to give her a straight answer did nothing to temper her mood, only amplified her impatience. She had spent the whole ride back choosing her words, anticipating this confrontation. Wherever he was—the ramparts, the War Room—she would find him. She was going to fire him, she was going to dismiss him, and she was going to do it so loudly that her words resounded through the Keep so everyone would know _exactly_ why he no longer served her Inquisition. 

She wanted to make an example of him— _this behavior will not be tolerated._ She wanted him to feel ashamed.

Lieutenant Peyton looked panicked. Her displeasure was clear, and he wilted beneath her withering gaze. “Please, Inquisitor, Ser, I am under the strictest of orders. You should really… there’s something else you’ll want to address first.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “I am fully capable of deciding which of my responsibilities are most pressing, Lieutenant. And whatever missive you may be carrying, my discussion with Commander Rutherford is of far greater importance. So, for the third time—where is he?” She added darkly, “And do _not_ make me ask a fourth.”

Peyton swallowed, shifted his weight. Thanduwen made a mental note of it—whatever Cullen’s faults, he’d certainly earned the loyalty of his men such that they were willing to at least contemplate defying her, the _Inquisitor_ , to obey his orders. Because only a direct order from Cullen could convinced this soldier to conceal his whereabouts; no one else of significant rank had any motive to give such an command.

“He asked not to be disturbed, Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, ser,” he said, finally, as if the use of her titles might spare him her ire. “He’s in his private chambers—he’s _quite_ ill.”

Thanduwen took a deep breath of relief—an answer, at last—and offered the soldier a tight-lipped smile. She had a destination. It was less public than she would have liked, but it would do. However ‘indisposed’ Cullen was, his illness would not spare him her wrath. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said, though she hardly sounded like she meant it; she began to push past him, heading towards the stairs that would lead her to the tower in which Cullen had taken up residence.

“Inquisitor! Inquisitor, I have something for you, and though I know it is audacious of me to say so, I think you _really_ should look at it!”

Thanduwen looked back at him, the line of her mouth twitching in annoyance. For a moment Peyton stood, dumbly, before he realized she was waiting for him; he jogged forward, fishing in one of his pockets, then pulled out a well-worn scrap of parchment. The seal on the letter was already broken. “This came yesterday, Inquisitor,” he said. “The order was to pass any news directly on to you, but the Commander said you would be returning to the fortress soon. We held it for you instead of sending it by raven, to make sure you received it.”

Thanduwen looked at him curiously, unfolding the letter in her hands. Lieutenant Peyton turned to leave her, but before he could she reached out, lightning quick, and seized his wrist in a vice-like grip—not to keep him close in particular, but because after those first lines— _The Dalish were greatly surprised to see Inquisition soldiers coming to fight on their behalf_ —she needed another person to cling to, to keep her standing, steady; she swallowed, found her throat dry. She had been waiting for this news for nearly a month, and now that she held the long awaited letter in her hands, she was terrified to read on, frightened of what the words within might disclose.

She read the missive once, twice—by the third time her hand had begun to shake, and Peyton’s arm with it—reading the lines over and over, in a state of shock, disbelief, until her vision blurred and she could repeat the lines no longer through the tears that had gathered in her eyes and the truth of the letter finally broke through her stupor—Mythal’enaste, it was over _._

It was over, and they were _safe_.

The weight of all those weeks in Crestwood fell away from her. All that time spent hoping, waiting, _grieving,_ had come to an end. How the sight of small fishing boats bobbing in the waters of Lake Calenhad had made her think of Wycome and turned her thoughts dark with despair for what might yet come to pass. The nightmare that she still felt upon waking: dreamt images of her brother lying slaughtered among the lichens of the woods she had loved, their aravels burning, the children chained to be marched off and sold into slavery as if they were just another ware to trade, a thing to be sold, used. And that they were safe, now, did not mean that these things would never come to be. But it was clear from the letter that, for the present, the danger had passed _._

“Good news, ser?” the lieutenant asked, meekly, peering up at her.

She choked a weak sound out—a wet laugh—before nodding vigorously. Her cheeks were wet with her tears, _relief—they are safe_ , when she finally realized she was still holding his hand. A soft “oh” of surprise escaped her as she released him, her eyebrows knitting together with embarrassment as she smiled in apology. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head, tying to rouse herself back into the figure of  authority and discipline she had presented only moments heavier when asking after Cullen.

She straightened herself, wiped the tears from her eyes as she tucked the parchment into her pocket. “Lieutenant,” she said, inclining her head respectfully towards him, a hand on her breast to indicate the depth of her gratitude. “ _Thank you_ , for bringing this to my attention. And I owe you an apology. I was rude and impatient with you earlier, but this was very worthy of bringing to my attention.”

Peyton seemed unsure what to do with that—an apology. She suspected that in the army such an occurrence—an acknowledgment of fault—was rare. When he spoke, his words were measured, and he kept his eyes focused on the ground. “You are… under great pressure, Inquisitor, ser. It would take a toll on anyone.”

She hummed, an amused sort of sound. “Please see to it that Lieutenant Chambreterre and each of his men are given a bonus of five gold pieces per soldier. Tell Ambassador Montiliyet to pay them out of my personal funds. Make sure they know it is a gift from me, in gratitude.”

That, finally, was a command he could do something about. Lieutenant Peyton straightened, saluted her with a “Yes, Ser,” and marched off. He looked relieved, even from behind, to be excused from her attention.

Her eyes followed him, amused smile still playing about her lips. The courtyard was bustling with activity: couriers running messages around the fortress, nurses rushing to and from the infirmary, the harts being led on gentle laps around the courtyard to stretch their limbs before they were led to their stalls.

And in all that activity, she was not sure, now, what to do with herself.

She had been on her way to dismiss Cullen, to punish him in the worst ways she could, and yet, there was no getting around this simple fact: the letter that had been written by Lieutenant Chambreterre been addressed to Commander Rutherford. It was Cullen who had convinced her the best way to defend her Clan was to send soldiers. He had risked his position within the Inquisition to do so—his letter of resignation was still in her coat, held close and carried with her, the smallest of assurances against the greatest of losses.

If someone had told her a year ago that her family would be saved by _shemlen,_ she would have laughed at them. If someone had told her that it would be a Templar who would give the order that would save her Clan, she would have spat in their face. 

And yet….

She grabbed one of the nurses nearby, whispered to her, “Please meet me outside Commander Rutherford’s office in five minutes, and bring me a bowl of cold mountain water, and a clean rag.” As the nurse hurried off, she headed for the garden, and plucked several stalks of elfroot and other choice herbs from their pots before she hastened up the stairs to Skyhold’s walls, to Cullen’s tower.

 

Thanduwen invited herself up the ladder to Cullen’s chambers without announcing herself; she found him tossing in his bed in the throes of a fever dream. 

All the years she had been blessed to live with her Clan—each aravel packed with bodies curled close at night, everyone bathing together in the same bend of the river—had given her less of an interest in privacy then the humans usually had. She had not been raised with doors and boundaries; she took comfort in proximity and touch, in being surrounded by her community.

All the same, she knew full well what she did now was a violation, creeping into Cullen’s quarters while he slept. Had it been anyone other than Cullen— had she not been dead-set on dismissing him as soon as he woke—she would have returned later.

But she could be alone here, with her thoughts. No one would find her, come looking for her here. No one was waiting in the wings to whisk her off to Undercroft, or the Rookery, or the Library, shuttling her along the endless retinue of decisions that required her personal attention—always a seemingly endless itinerary of tasks each time she returned to the Inquisition’s base after time spent away. And right now, she needed that space.

Discovering her family was safe had taken some of the wind out of her sails, quelled her rage. She had spent so long on the road, thinking of Cullen and all the myriad ways she would chastise him, reprimand him, _ruin him,_ but now—calmed by Chambreterre’s success—she was glad she had not been given a chance to follow through. For whatever his faults—and they were _abundant_ —this was still the man who had led their people out of Haven. It would have been callous of her to scream him out of Skyhold, and unbefitting of the image she was trying to maintain as Inquisitor. It was an image that, all things considered, she probably spent more effort trying to construct and maintain than she should, but it was important to her all the same.

It was, in short, beneath her to do what she had come here to do—no matter how good it would have made her feel, or how deserving of the reproach Cullen may have been.

That was as far as she wished to extend her compassion, no further. But she could not help the nagging sensation that, for the role he had played (however small) in saving her Clan, she owed him a debt, some small measure of kindness. And he looked so _pitiable_ as he was, tossing his his sleep, murmuring fitfully in the clutches of some nightmare. He had nearly sweat through his sheets and they had twisted about his body from all his somnolent thrashing. _Quite ill_ , Lieutenant Peyton had said, and even that did not quite do the sight justice.

And so, to absolve herself of this debt she felt she owed, as well as to quash the pity in her heart, she had brought the bowl of mountain water, and the herbs. 

Quietly, so as not to disturb his sleep, she walked across the sparsely furnished space of his bedroom, moved the lone wooden chair from the corner of the room to his bedside. Upon his nightstand she sat the bowl of cool water. Crossing her legs, she set the rag in her lap, and began to crush between her fingers the fresh herbs she had collected from the garden, relishing the earthy smell they released when squeezed into a paste. Elfroot was named so because it was known among the Dalish as a cure all, and different parts of the plant—its roots, its leaves, the waxy film that covered new buds in the spring—were used in almost every herbal remedy known to the Dalish. Even the smell of it wafting up her nose helped ease her own anxiety about the imminent confrontation ahead of her—she felt her mind calm.

She folded the corners of the rag inward, then folded the cloth in half, with the herbs pocketed in the center. Then she dipped the poultice into the cold water, and, careful to first squeeze the excess moisture free, placed it gently on Cullen’s forehead.

He did not stir at the touch, but within a few minutes, he had calmed. His body relaxed into the mattress beneath him; the lines of his face smoothed. Satisfied with her handiwork, Thanduwen folded her hands over her abdomen and leaned back in the chair. She kept her eyes to the ceiling, trained on the hole in the roof, watching the clouds pass by above—and waited.

With the buzz of the elfroot calming her, she plotted the course of the conversation she wished to have with Cullen. _Conversation;_ she chastised herself for the mild descriptor. His dismissal was shaping up to be far more civil than she had originally intended—elfroot scent, and she was level-headed—she was not sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. 

All the while, she kept her eyes trained on the hole in the ceiling above, watching the clouds lazily cross the framed blue space. Strange, that the hole had not yet been fixed. It was only early winter, but already the mountains had grown cold. No doubt the snow would come right through that hole, piling on the floor below, never mind the rain. But by then, she mused, the room would be unoccupied.

“Inquisitor! Maker’s breath! Who let you—how did you—”

Thanduwen turned her eyes back to Cullen just in time to catch him sitting up, the abruptness of that gesture enough to send the poultice slapping down his face and onto his chest, dampening the linens he had slept in. She leaned over the bed and plucked the pouch from his abdomen to place it back on his forehead, then thought better of it when she felt how quickly his body had warmed it.

“I arrived back in Skyhold this morning,” she said, wringing the warm water and perspiration out of the poultice before dipping it back into the bowl of cold water at Cullen’s bedside. “We needed to have a chat.” The ‘t’ at the end of the word: sharp, crisp, biting. “I was willing to wait.”

For a moment Cullen was silent, incredulous, before he managed, “This is my private room.” There was a faint note of vexation in his voice, but mostly he seemed bewildered that she would broach the sanctum of his privacy.

“Not to put too fine a point on things,” Thanduwen said, amusement in her voice. It pleased her, a little, to see him so uneasy, “but though it may be your room, I am Inquisitor, and this is my fortress. What happens within its walls is my business, and I will come and go as I please. Tilt your head back.” She flashed him a cheeky grin as she let the excess moisture drip from the damp poultice, before leaning over him to press it once more to his forehead.

“And what was so urgent that it could not wait?” Cullen asked, and he looked very cross, but that did nothing to discourage Thanduwen as she settled back into the wooden chair with a smile. “And what are you putting on my head?”

With that, her smile had gone. “Don’t worry,” she quipped, her voice was thick with sarcasm, “it isn’t _magic._ ” For though her demeanor had been cheery when he woke, she had not forgotten the reason that she had come here. But she was getting ahead of herself—she would allow her fury the space it demanded but not yet, not yet. She forced herself to pause, breathing deeply, easing the hardness out of her stare before she looked back at Cullen.

When he had been asleep, he was two things at once: both the Commander who had staked his reputation on her family’s safety, and the Templar who had made the Gallows one of the most brutal and feared Circles in all of Thedas. Silent and resting, he could be both those things and they did not seem a contradiction; he could shift between the two of them in the space of a breath. But now that he was awake, the sight of him turned Thanduwen’s stomach. Before her was a man who was more a stranger to her than he had ever been, and she had crept into his room while he slept and played nurse by his bedside. 

She cleared her throat.

“It’s just a poultice. Elfroot, mostly. Lieutenant Peyton said you were ill.” She turned her eyes away from him to scan the bare walls of the room (for the respite of sparing herself the sight of him, if only for a brief moment) as she reached into her pocket and pulled out the letter from Lieutenant Chambreterre. “He gave me this, as soon as I got through the gates,” she said, placing the letter gently—reverently—on his nightstand.

Then she paused, shrugged uneasily, turned her eyes to the floor. For months, she had stared into his face, defiant, a tempest, a fury. She had never before found looking at him to be quite so painful. She sighed, exasperated with herself, before she finally raised her eyes to look at him again.

“I wanted to thank you,” and though she had the force the words out of her mouth, the gratitude was not disingenuous. “For saving my family.”

Cullen’s face softened, and then it was his turn look away; he turned his gaze out the small window on the opposite side of his bed. “It was Lieutenant Chambreterre and his men who saved your Clan. They should have your praise, not me.”

“They do,” she said. “And they will be compensated accordingly for their efforts.” But then she swallowed, looked him in the face again, hating him, a little, for his modesty. Why had he deflected her gratitude the first time? Why must he make this so difficult, force her to repeat it? She did not want to praise him, _thank_ him…. 

But still, the truth: he had not hesitated to put the lives of his men on the line to defend her Clan. She knew what the humans said about them: Dalish cannibals, rabbit-eared vagabonds, barbarians, heathens, a cautionary tale to be whispered to shemlen children beside the hearth, in the safety of their cities. And the list of humans who had ever taken such risk to protect her people—if there even were enough of them to make such a list—was no doubt very short. 

It did not exonerate him for the things he had done in Kirkwall. It did not make him _remarkable_. And it was true, what he said: it had involved very little risk to his person. But still he had done it, wanted to do it, pleaded with her to let him. She did not want that debt or bond between them to exist—she detested it—but she could not simply wish it away. And if this was the last time they would speak, that debt deserved to be spoken aloud, to be recognized. For her Clan’s sake, if not for his. 

“But it was you, Cullen,” she said finally, softly, and he turned from the window at the sound of his name, for it was so rare she addressed him that way, instead of using his title, “who gave the order that Lieutenant Chambreterre executed, had them paddling down river through the night to arrive in time.” She held his gaze, struggled to find the words: “I will not forget it, Commander.”

Something about the way she looked at him or spoke to him rendered him silent. Perhaps he was surprised at any word of thanks from her—their relationship had never been friendly, strained at even the best of times—or perhaps he was still battling the shock of having woken to the sight of her at his bedside. But she could not hold his gaze; she tore her eyes away, tracing the patterns of the wood grain on the floor. 

Finally, Cullen spoke. “Your gratitude is… appreciated,” he said, carefully. “Though I still wish you had waited until I was more hale. This feels…” here he searched for the words, hesitant to offend or shatter the rare moment of peace between them, “…most unprofessional.”

And that was all it took, like the flipping of a switch. She was reminded of why she had really come here; the time for praise had passed, eclipsed by what she knew must inevitably follow. What had allowed her to stomach delivering that praise in the first place.  Thanduwen hummed, leaned back in the wooden chair as she rummaged through her pockets. “It is ironic that you should mention that—professionalism. Because that is not the only letter I have been carrying around with me.”

From deep within her traveling clothes she pulled his resignation letter, and unfolded it for Cullen’s benefit, so he could see clear as day his signature at the bottom of the page. Then she placed it atop the first letter on his nightstand, tapped it twice with her forefinger.

“I was very tempted to use this,” she mused, almost reluctant to take her hand from it. Her fingertips fluttered along its surface. “But that would dishonor the arrangement made between us. After all, you delivered my family to safety, and the fate of my Clan is not something I take lightly. _You_ can use it, if you like,” she added with a sniff of disdain. “You can tell the men you resigned. But effective immediately—” how she savored each word, the feel of it in her mouth! “—I am relieving you of your duty as my military advisor, and as Commander of the Inquisition’s forces.”

Cullen was silent, his face crestfallen; to his credit, he did not loo in the least bit surprised. After a moment, he folded his arms over his chest. It was a gesture that looked imposing when he was in full armor, but looked faintly ridiculous now that he was wearing his pajamas and lying in bed. “Have you found me to be… negligent in my duties, Inquisitor?”

She could not stop the way her lips pulled back on her teeth, like a snarling dog, preparing to bite, when she said, “I spoke to Hawke. I know, now, what you did—what you were like, in Kirkwall. What you _are._ ”

At mention of Hawke’s name he flinched, and his face transformed at once into the most exquisite distillation of grief, and pain. The twisting of his features once more dislodged the poultice from his forehead but this time, she did not reach forward to replace it. She could not have done so, even if she wanted to, for Cullen had brought a hand to his face and was covering his eyes, though whether in shame or frustration, she could not say.

“You were not supposed to know.” Spoken under his breath and probably more to himself than to Thanduwen, but that was all it took, match to powder keg, and the rage she had felt when crossing Ferelden back to Skyhold returned in full force.

“I was not supposed to know?” she hissed, incredulously. “Did you and Cassandra really believe I would not find out eventually? For how long did you plan to keep up this charade? Pretending to be something you are not, pretending to be a man of honor, and integrity? When you are still every bit the Templar you always were—”

His hand flew from his face in an instant. “I am _not_ the man I was in Kirkwall!” he shouted back at her, the scar at his lip twisted in a matching snarl of his own.

“How can that be, if you have changed so little?” Thanduwen cried. His refusal unlocked something within her, her wrath mounting. She had not been prepared for him to deny what he had done; she had thought he would have the decency to acknowledge the truth. That he had the gall to pretend he had changed—!

Thanduwen flew out of her chair and began to pace the room.  She needed the momentum to control herself, the satisfying sound of heels pounding wood, resounding. “Trying to convince me to side with the Templars, trying to persuade me to break my agreement with Fiona when I brought the Free Mages here. Talking about… _surveilling_ the mages, corralling them, as though this were some kind of prison. A Circle. It is _not._ ”

“That was caution! It is not the same thing.”

“It is _exactly_ the same thing,” she hissed, and she could feel it, still, despite her attempts to control it—standing, pacing—her rage getting the better of her. Control slipping away from her. That was dangerous. She could feel the atmosphere of the room tightening. She breathed, deep: it was important that she not lose control, not now. She could not afford to have him think he was right about mages, about her—it was imperative that not so much as the smallest discharge of electricity escape her. 

She pointed at him accusingly as she resumed her pacing—if she used her body, kept it moving, she was less likely to tap into the mana around her without realizing. “You have always… looked at me with fear. With _terror._ Said things that disturbed and upset me, but I let it go—I shouldn’t have. If you had your way, you’d have me leashed, like a dog, like a _thing,_ not even a person to you. You’d chain me like one of the Qunari Saaerebas. Free to beat me, maim me, _rape_ me—”

“Thanduwen!” he cried, “I— _”_

“Do _not_ use my name,” and the severity of her expression alone—thunderous—was enough to silence him. “For months, I have asked myself why the mages avoid you, _whisper_ about you, what frightens them so. But this is it, isn’t it? Those who came from Kirkwall with horror stories about you, about the things you did or turned a blind eye to, and I? I put you in charge of leading them into battle, _put their lives in your hands,_ I…”

The weight of it, crashing upon her; confronting him had not lessened the burden of it, but made it worse. In Kirkwall, he had done such unspeakable things, and instead of locking him in a cell where he would never see daylight again they had given him a promotion, and Thanduwen had allowed it, whether she knew it or not. “I can’t believe… they let you get away with it,” she said, simply, finally. Her voice was soft and defeated, and her pacing slowed to a stop.  She stood, lamely, crossing her arms; she could not bring herself to sit once more at his bedside. “You are not the man I thought you were.”

“But I am not _that_ man, either,” Cullen insisted. Thanduwen looked daggers at him, and he turned his eyes back to the damp poultice in his lap, worrying its edges with his fingers. “There’s something I…” and he paused for a long while, fingers fretting under her scrutiny, incessant. He sighed. “I suppose there’s no use in hiding it any longer. I’m not ill, Inquisitor.”

She laughed mirthlessly, drumming her fingers on her forearms. “You _look_ it.” And he did. Dark circles around his eyes, damp sweat on his forehead, a sallow look to his skin.

A faint look of irritation flashed across his face, but it vanished just as quickly. “I’m not ill, but I’m not well. I’m in withdrawal,” he said, as if it were obvious, simple. “I thought that was why you dismissing me. Because you had found out.”

His admission rendered her mute, and she cycled through many emotions very quickly. Angrily, she wondered, what did she care for his health, the source of his malady? Did he think it would earn him her pity? Then, confused, she asked herself: withdrawal from _what_? And then, the realization: Lyrium. 

The smallest flame of compassion flickered within her, and before she could finish tallying up what that might mean—why he would have forsaken the potion he had come to rely on—she asked, “Is it very bad?”

He gave a dry laugh. “Not nearly as bad, I am sure, as what I have inflicted on others.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “I can endure it.”

She sniffed, unfolded her arms, ran her hand through her hair distractedly—it was her turn to fidget. Her ring finger smoothed over the hair of her eyebrow. After a few moments, she turned back to him. “Why?” 

(Though she already half-knew the answer. She knew how Templars relied on lyrium. Josephine had explained it to her in the early days, back when they were securing their supply from the Carta for the Templars who had defected from the Order to join them. Without lyrium, those Templars could go mad; they could die. The only reason Thanduwen could think of for giving it up when it was so readily available was for reasons of principal, of _conviction_. And it twisted something awful inside of her when that suspicion was confirmed:)

“Because,” he said slowly, and his eyes were in his lap again, “I will not be tied to that life any longer.” Softer, “I want no part of it. And if I succeed… it will prove that others can, too. There are Templars—far better men and women than I—who have wished they could leave that life behind, wished for a second chance like the one Cassandra gave me, but the lyrium took that chance away from them.”

Her eyes shot up to his again, suspicion creeping back into them. “Before or after the Red Templars attacked Haven?”

“Before,” he practically whispered. “When I joined in the Inquisition."

She turned her eyes to the ground, her fingers worrying the hem on her jacket. If he had only abstained from the use of lyrium after the appearance of the Red Templars at Haven then, maybe, she could have found a way to twist his sobriety into something she could disdain, something more selfish. It was not, and she could feel her resolve abandoning her because of it. She had no love for Cullen, but she was not sure she could find it within her to be cruel in the face of his confession. 

“I do not tell you this to dissuade you from whatever fate you had decided for me,” he said quietly, softly. She watched him as he spoke, his hands smoothing out the wrinkles in his bedsheets. “Hawke, no doubt, told you all my other secrets; there seemed little point in holding on to this last one. If you demand penance for my sins, I will not fight you. But I wanted you, at least, to know: I will not die on the leash the Chantry put around _my_ neck.”

Thanduwen laughed again. A hollow thing. “If you are off the Chantry’s leash but still keeping guard at their gate, what good is your freedom?” she rebutted. “If I were possessed, what would you do? Would you try to help me? Give the others a chance to free me? Or would you put me down like a rabid dog? And _pala em,_ what, in the name of the Creators, is dangling from your neck?”

Cullen was a picture of penitence, regret; he had swung his legs over the side of the bed and taken his head in his hands, bent over. But it was the necklace he wore, not the gesture, that had seized her attention. It had tumbled loose from where it had been hidden in the folds of his sleeping tunic as he bent over. Hanging from blue twine, there hung a small wooden pendant, carved in the image of a longsword wreathed in flame.

Cullen seemed as surprised as she was. He cupped the pendant in his palm, holding it up for her to get a clearer look at it. “It was a gift from Keeper Deshanna, given with her gratitude. Though I confess, I have never seen the Templar heraldry rendered thusly before.”

“It is _not_ the Templar heraldry,” she practically spat. An easy mistake to make—it should not have filled her with such venom—but seeing it around his neck had brought her fury back to its old heights.

“Then what is it?” Cullen asked, his tone puzzled. He seemed, however, more perplexed by the severity of her reaction than the icon around his neck.

 _It is not for you to wear, nor for you to know._ “It is nothing,” Thanduwen said, catching herself. _It means nothing, changes—nothing._ “It is a good luck charm, a superstition. A talisman, nothing more.”

But as she looked at him, toying with the pendant, looking at it with curiosity, she felt the lie within her like a thorn. And the pain of it—the pain at this confluence of circumstance, the gesture from her Clan that left her feeling trapped, _caged_ by coincidence—she groaned in frustration and sunk to her knees, covering her face with her hands—practically sprang out of the squat a heartbeat later, running a hand through her hair. “ _Nuva mar’edhis banafelas i miol’en av ra_ ,” she half-whispered to herself as she rose, but not quietly enough for Cullen to miss it.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means you’re a fucking idiot,” she fumed, the words thrown over her shoulder as she stalked to the far window of the room, the one that overlooked the courtyard. A breeze brushed her cheeks, and she leaned against the cool stone of the wall. 

From here, she could see the pathway that led directly from Cullen’s office to the rotunda, where Solas had taken up residence. It occurred to her that this—Cullen’s proximity to the least familiar mage in the Inquisition (the “ _hedge mage_ ,” as Cullen had once called him. She had practically leapt across the War Table to claw Cullen’s face off for that)—was not a coincidence.

What _was_ a coincidence was the sword around Cullen’s neck. Keeper Deshanna couldn't have known. It was chance, and nothing more.

But Deshanna, too, had always found something sacred in coincidence, marveled in the patterns of confluence and synchronicity. The will of the Creators was beyond the understanding of mortals, and worked in mysterious ways; the line between “coincidence” and “fate” was not so easily defined, just different words for the same thing, June’s hands slipping through the Veil from the Beyond just to nudge things into place. Only a fool, Deshanna had said, would idly ignore the will of the Creators when it had been made so abundantly clear.

And in a time that felt far more distant than it was (everything, now, that had happened before the Conclave seemed like it had happened in another Age, an impossibly long time past) she had walked with her Keeper and mentor under thick canopies of trees, listening to her wisdom. Mulling over questions of morality and becoming, responsibility and selfhood:

_“We must trust ourselves, to know what is right. To know the difference between justice and vengeance—the things we do for others, and the things we do for ourselves.”_

But she was so, so tired of being selfless. Of weighing each decision to know whether or not it was righteous. And in that moment—briefly—she loathed Cassandra for putting her in this position even more than she hated Cullen. For it was Cassandra who had hired him, and then concealed—through no small effort of orchestration, for both Leliana and Varric had known, and there was no way they had all simply _forgot_ to tell her—all of Cullen’s past transgressions. And now the whole mess was Thanduwen’s responsibility to fix.

Another breeze from the window tickled her cheeks, and she could hear the sounds of laughter and order and so much _life_ in the courtyard below; she closed her eyes.

On the inside, she was howling. Screaming, thrashing. She did not want this responsibility. But worse than that was the small seed of compassion and pity she felt germinating inside of her, uncalled for, undesired—she did not want it. She wished she could bury her fingers in her chest and claw it out of her. She wished she could be every bit as monstrous as the mages Cullen feared, wanted it, was desperate for it. She wanted to be pitiless, utterly devoid of compassion.

But she was not. And the necklace had only appeared to her _just then_ : the sacred sword around his neck, the sword of endeavor, and covenant. And the truth was, less than whether she knew whether it was right or wrong, she knew that firing Cullen would be easy. Allowing him to stay—to prove his worth, to commit to his recovery—that would be far more difficult.

Regardless, something would have to change; they could not go on as they had.

Thanduwen turned from the window to face Cullen. And he looked still so pitiful to her, bent over and contrite. The sacred Dalish symbol that she dared not name still held like a fragile and precious thing between his fingers, as though he knew it was important, though he did not know why.

“ _Fenedhis_ ,” she sighed, bringing her hand to her head, rubbing her temples. The sound punctured the silence, and Cullen turned his eyes upwards to her. She avoided them.

“What you are doing, ceasing the use of lyrium…” she said, slowly, staring at the ground. “It is… brave. It is also _stupid_ , and reckless, and _not enough_ , but it is brave. Still,” she said, quietly, “it is easier, I think, to do that—to put yourself through this… withdrawal, this self-flagellation—than it is to confront yourself. To do the very real work that you need to do in order to truly atone.” She paused, took a deep breath, then looked up at him.

“You are running from your mistakes. That is not the same thing as fixing them. And lyrium or none, you are still…” her voice trailed off, and a distant smile came to her lips; she remembered, again, their early arguments in the War Room; how once, Cassandra had needed to physically hold them apart to keep the argument from becoming a brawl. “I would not call you _negligent_ in your duties, but certainly you are bound by the bias you _think_ you’ve washed yourself clean of by this abstention. Even from the beginning, you have been utterly incapable of being objective. There was a Tevinter Magister occupying an Arl’s holdings in _your homeland_ , and still, you thought it better to leave him to his devices and go to Therinfal Redoubt rather than expel him, for you knew doing so would mean working with the Free Mages.”

Cullen had diverted his eyes, was staring somewhere at the floor again; it was the only reason why now, as she spoke—calm, measured—she could stare at him, hard and admonishing. (Only easy to look when he wasn’t looking back.) “And now,” she continued, “I have learned what everyone else knew, and I don’t know if I can even look Grand Enchanter Fiona in the eye any longer. I feel the biggest fool. The greatest hypocrite.”

The room fell quiet. Cullen kept his gaze trained on the floor, expression unreadable. From below they could hear the sounds of the guards switching patrols. Someone told a joke; sounds of laughter. (So close, and always on the wall—had Cullen come to know his men by the way they laughed? By the patterns of their footsteps patrolling the ramparts at night? Did he know, even now, who lingered just below his window?)

Cullen brought a hand to his cheek; even across the room, in that silence, Thanduwen could hear the rasping sound his stubble as his fingernails scratched his jaw. She watched as his hand moved to the back of his neck—that old repository of knotted muscles, tension and stress—and pawed at it, anxiously. And in the space between them, unspoken, but clear: her crumbling resolve. ( _Why must she feel so torn? Why can she not distinguish strength from weakness—_ ) 

Cullen gave a shiver, wrapped his arms around himself, peered up at her from where he sat, hunched, on the edge of his bed. “If you wish to do right by the Free Mages,” he said, quietly, and she took note: for once, he did not call them _rebels,_ “then, perhaps, what is best, is to turn me over to them. Allow them to decide my fate, as they are the wounded party in this, not you.”

If she were not so tense herself her mouth may have fallen open in shock. Instead she blinked, several times and in rapid succession, before her eyes narrowed, suspiciously. She would think his suggestion terribly devious, but if what she had heard of Kirkwall was true, she doubted Cullen was capable of such subtlety. She lifted her head, her chin tilted arrogantly; she was intrigued, and trying her damnedest not to show it. “What?”

“You wish to wash your hands of me,” Cullen said, and there was unevenness to his tone (a fear?) that she had never heard before, “but I see you struggling. It is plain. You have always… struggled, with me. Privately, I had my doubts that we would ever work well together. And when you were named Inquisitor, I…” 

And then his face did that _thing_ again, that thing it had done when she had said aloud Hawke’s name. It was in this expression that he showed his age, the lines of stress deepening on his face, around his eyes, his mouth, all of them etched into such a display of despair and self-loathing she could only wonder at it. He wore it only for a moment before he brought his hands to his face again, hiding from the light, taking refuge in the darkness held in his palms. 

And though she wanted to believe it was not genuine—a mask he wore, to garner sympathy—she knew well by now that Cullen had trouble both controlling and concealing his emotions. He was not capable, she was sure, of such a technically flawless duplicity. And the gravity of what he offered now was clear to her. Because though he might deny it— _I am not that man any longer_ —she had seen the look in his eyes when she spellcast, when she brough the mages back to Haven: he was terrified of them.

Cullen emerged a moment later with a sniff, running his hands through his hair, trying—failing—to look more composed when he met her gaze once more, brown eyes wet with shine. “You are right. I have been running from what happened to me,” here he hastily corrected himself, “from what _I have done,_ for so long. And I am so weary of it. I can’t… I can’t do it any longer.”

Thanduwen had to look away from him, out the window again, at the blue, at anything—the sight of him there tugging at her (something [wouldn’t say _heart_ ] deep in her chest) too much to bear. Until this moment, she had felt nothing for Cullen but contempt, if not outright malice. They had been rude to one another, adversarial. These things, she told herself, should make the decision that lay before her easy, _simple._  

But they do not. They complicate.

And Cullen—Cullen was still hunched on the bed, staring at some place far through and beyond the floorboards, his jaw set. In the throes of some some past sin, some regret.

Her indecision, in that moment, is brief: a flicker.

Then she curses, softly, “ _evanuris lasa ghilani,”_ and then she is crossing the room, spinning the wooden chair 'round so she can straddle the seat, fold her arms over the back and rest her chin on her forearms as she watches Cullen, as he raises his eyes to her, slow and full of trepidation. But instead of further scolding—instead of condemnation—she asks, her voice soft:

“Why didn’t you tell me? About the lyrium.”

He holds her gaze only briefly, before turning his eyes away. “We didn’t think…. Cassandra knew,” he said, quietly. “She has been watching me. It was agreed that if I became…” here hesitated, “ _unfit,_ she would have removed me from my position. It was a possibility we were prepared for. It is why my resignation letter was already written—I knew full well the risks involved, the possibility of failure."

“You could _die._ ”

He gave her a knowing look, but when he spoke, there was no malice or accusation in his tone, simply truth. “I would have thought it made little difference to you.”

She swallowed, looked away from him, crossed her arms over her chest again. “It would have put the Inquisition in a very difficult situation.”

“You would have managed, Inquisitor,” he said. “You always do.”

( _On the inside, she was howling, screaming, thrashing—she did not want his worship._ )

“Setting aside,” Thanduwen said, motioning with her hand as if she were pushing something away from her, “ _everything_ else,” she settled, finally, but even then she was at a loss, her mouth hanging half open. She looked ridiculous—she felt ridiculous, useless, impotent. Then she brought her hand back in to her chest, patted the palm of her hand a few times against her sternum. “I couldn’t… I can’t… _help you_ , if you don’t tell me what is going on. I should have known about this a long time ago. I could have supported you better. You needn’t have…” she looked at him, rolled her eyes in frustration at herself (at this whole cocked-up situation) and then gestured, vaguely, at the poultice, left abandoned in the sheets. “Even if we have our… there are ways, to manage the physical symptoms.” Creators, she could give a coherent speech to a crowd of hundreds without preparation but here she was, stumbling over her words like an adolescent with a crush. Tongue twisted around her empathy.

He asked, fairly: “Does it matter, now?”

On the tip of her tongue but unbidden to be spoken, _yes, of course it does._ It mattered because she wanted to be hard, but she couldn’t. Wanted to be practical, but wasn’t sure what that meant in this context. She had kept Alexius close at hand instead of taking his head because she thought he might be of some use, yet, and the burden upon her, _herself_ , not Inquisitor, not Herald: _I alone am responsible for what I become_ , the sacred marks of June etched across her face as a reminder of that fact. And Solas’ words, _the truth is never precise, regardless of where you are_ , and her, now, looking at her Commander, knowing that wherever the truth was, she was not capable of seeing it clearly.

( _Dangling from his neck, even now, the sacred sword._ )

She swung back out of the chair, walked over to the bed, close enough to scoop the discarded poultice up from where it had sat, dampening the mattress below. She carried it over to the bedside table and returned it to the bowl, her back to Cullen. As she spoke, she busied herself collecting the remnant bits of herbs left on the stand’s surface, picking the wood clean, dropping the scraps to float in to the bowl of water she had carried with her.

“Grand Enchanter Fiona will judge you for what you have done, and you will face the punishment she deems most just,” she said, quietly. “But not until after all of this is over. You will face trial for your crimes when Corypheus is defeated, if he is defeated—if there is anyone left standing to judge you fairly.”

“Pending her approval,” she continued, “Fiona will be made a Commander of the army herself. It will give the Mages a commanding officer who is not a former Templar, and it will give you more time to focus on your recovery. Fiona will be asked to attend all strategic meetings in the War Room. She will assume responsibility for the command and training of the mages in the Inquisition’s army. If she can endure it,” she said, and peered over her shoulder at Cullen before turning back to the nightsand, “and that is a big _if,_ you will work together to command the army as equals. But know that what I have given I can just as easily take away. And if I hear that you have disrespected Fiona, or acted out, or so much as _looked at a mage_ in a way she does not like—”

Thanduwen turned to face him—she could look at him, with the warning on her face, admonishment—only to find him no longer on the bed but sunk to his knees on the floor, head bowed, prostrate. 

She fisted her hands, closed her eyes, looked away from him. “Please get up.”

“I am undeserving of your mercy, Inquisitor,” Cullen said, hurried and hushed. “I endeavor not to disappoint you; I will not squander this chance I have been given.”

Unbearable, unbearable, the weight of this worship. “Please, Cullen. Please get up.” She reached out, palm opened, upwards. 

Cullen turned his head to look at it, wary; but “come on,” she insisted, with less patience in her voice, and it was close enough to an order for him. He took his hand in hers to steady himself as he raised himself to his feet but once standing he swayed, dangerously, dizzily.

“Easy,” she said, quietly, bringing out her other hand to hold him steady. A barely suppressed laugh escaped her—she couldn’t help it, cutting through her unease—before she hummed, “You _do_ look like shit. Did the poultice help at all?”

“Some,” Cullen confessed, the embarrassment at his dizzy spell plain on his face. “I slept easier, I think. But don’t—you needn’t worry about that, not now. I’m sure there are many other matters that require your attention. You haven’t even changed out of your traveling clothes…”

They let the moment hang between them. It went unspoken, but both Cullen and Thanduwen realized and recognized this simple fact at once: whatever reason she had for seeking him out—rebuke, gratitude, dismissal—they both knew she had come straight to him after three weeks on the road. She had not even bothered to brush the mud from her clothes first.

Thanduwen hummed, a sound that made her seem more confident than she felt. She released her hold on his arms, and turned around to collect the bowl of water from his bedside. The whole conversation with Cullen had left her feeling shook, and exhausted, and she did not like the way he was looking at her now, with that sense of _wonder._ “I’ll instruct one of the nurses—one of the more trustworthy ones, with a sense of discretion—on how to prepare it, for when I am not here to do so. Probably they’ll do a better job. I was a little sloppy.”

From behind her, softly: “You were fine.”

She nodded, turned, carried the bowl to the hole in the floor from which the ladder descended. But before she made her descent, she turned back to Cullen. “That hole in the roof—we can have that fixed, if you like. I know it’s technically a non-essential repair, but it wouldn’t take long.”

“Oh! Oh, no, I…” and Cullen turned his face up to the hole in the roof, a faint smile crossing his features. A fondness.  “I prefer it the way it is. Being able to see the sky, and the stars, it helps me feel less… trapped.”

It was practically a Dalish attitude, and one Thanduwen understood all too well, but she didn’t say so. Instead they exchanged hasty farewells, and she disappeared through the floor, climbing down into Cullen’s office and hastening out the door, onto the castle walls. Once on the ramparts she closed her eyes, breathed deeply… free to feel less trapped herself.

Free of that room.

Creators, what had she been thinking, storming into his bedroom like that? She had thought to catch him off guard. For a time, she had, but she was foolish to think she carried more authority there. He had turned the tables on her so easily, done something she had never suspected him capable of: he caught her by surprise.

As the winter wind tickled the stray hairs around her face, she sighed. She did not know whether she had made the right decision. For all she knew, she may have just made things far worse. Only time would tell. She had told him, she had been perfectly clear: _what has been given can be revoked just as easily._ She could kick him out of the Inquisition at any time; that option was still available to her.

Of course, she might have to grow a backbone for that to happen. She had allowed herself to feel _sorry_ for him. That, she was certain, had been a mistake. She would have to stamp out that compassion within her before it grew into something more worrisome— _affection—_ her face twisted at the thought, revolted. She had given him a chance to prove himself, that was all, in honor of the deed he had done for her family. It was to absolve her of her debt to him; it did not make them friends. She would do well, in the future, to remember that. 

(Still, he had worn it like it was nothing, oblivious to its significance: Shartan’s Glandivalis around his neck, wreathed in Andraste’s flame. She had not told him what it meant: _trust_. An ancient symbol of the pact the elves had made with the humans long ago, before the promise was broken, before the Dales fell. The sword of covenant, of blood spilt and mingled, two peoples as one in the face of Tevinter’s tyranny. He did not deserve this token Deshanna had bestowed upon him—this she knew. But in the back of her mind—a sneaking suspicion she did her best to silence, she did not want to hope—she wondered if, by the end, he might earn it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: welcome to all my new readers!
> 
> I have so many complicated and conflicted feelings about Cullen. This chapter, as a consequence, was a struggle to write. There is a good possibility that, in the future, parts of it will be amended/rewritten as I'm sure its still got loads that could be improved. But tbqh I was exhausted with it and needed to move on because the next chapter is the Exalted Plains and I am way more excited to write Keeper Hawen than I should be, oops.
> 
> and a reminder: I am trying to be mindful about tagging stuff that might be triggering (or content that someone would want to avoid?) at the beginning notes of a chapter, but I am not always sure what deserves a mention. if there is something you think I should include, please do not hesitate to tell me.  
>    
> Translations:  
> Pala em | Fuck me.  
> Nuva mar’edhis banafelas i miol’en av ra. | May your dick rot and the insects eat it.  
> Evanuris lasa ghilani | Creators help me.
> 
> translations, as usual, made possible by the work of fenxshiral and Project Elvhen.


	15. Gone, Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she was young, Orlais had been but a curse on the lips of her elders, a distant land she might never see, unless an Arlathvhen brought her within the Empire’s borders. But the name of that country had taken on new meaning since she had joined the Inquisition. Contending with the belligerence and bigotry of the Orlesian Chantry (in concert with her long past visit to Val Royeaux) had given her new understanding as to why her Clan hated the Empire so, more than any of the other shemlen countries on the continent (save, perhaps, Tevinter.) But no matter how bitterly she detested the Empire, she had known, when she had met Alistair and Hawke in Crestwood, that she would have to cross the length of the Orlais to meet them in the Approach. And, despite how she dreaded that journey, she had accepted the necessity of it.
> 
> But this—the Exalted Plains—Dirthavaren. This was different. And she felt utterly unprepared to face it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: crass language.

Fuck Orlais.

Held close like a talisman, whispered under her breath in rhythm with the pace of her hart’s steps and the only respite from the insistent, mounting pressure behind her eyelids: fuck, fuck, _fuck_ Orlais.

When she was young, Orlais had been but a curse on the lips of her elders, a distant land she might never see, unless an Arlathvhen brought her within the Empire’s borders. But the name of that country had taken on new meaning since she had joined the Inquisition. Contending with the belligerence and bigotry of the Orlesian Chantry (in concert with her long past visit to Val Royeaux) had given her new understanding as to why her Clan hated the Empire so, more than any of the other _shemlen_ countries on the continent (save, perhaps, Tevinter.) But no matter how bitterly she detested the Empire, she had known, when she had met Alistair and Hawke in Crestwood, that she would have to cross the length of the Orlais to meet them in the Approach. And, despite how she dreaded that journey, she had accepted the necessity of it.

But this—the Exalted Plains— _Dirthavaren._ This was different. And she felt utterly unprepared to face it.

_(Lying on their backs atop the scaffolding he’d constructed, staring upwards through the vaulted column of the rotunda and through to the ceiling of the Rookery, “Will you come with me?” she’d asked, though she wasn’t sure she should. The kiss still lived in the space between them, as solid as any living, breathing thing, silent though it was. She had wanted to give him his time, whatever time he needed, had not wanted to push, but, “If I must go to the Dales, I… I do not want to be the only elf. I know you are not Dalish. But the others… they will not understand.”)_

She had left Skyhold on the twenty-fourth of Haring, at the closing of the year, in the company of Blackwall, Cole, and Solas, who had agreed to join her without reservation. He must have known (better than anyone) the toll the journey would take on her. 

It began almost at once.

From the moment she descended into the lowlands on the western side of the Frostbacks, she had been struck with a migraine that no poultice nor potion could remedy. On the fourth day of their journey, when distant rock pillars punctured the straight line of the horizon, the pain worsened. Some mornings she awoke to a throbbing in her temples so terrible it watered her eyes. It was not until the evening of the sixth day, when they arrived at Scout Harding’s forward camp, that Solas figured out what it was.

Thanduwen was standing before one of the three statues of Chantry figures that ringed their small encampment. The day was at a close; the sun was dipping below the line of the land, and it colored the statue’s face bright red with the last of its light. Thanduwen’s fists were clenched at her sides, her upper lip twitching in a grimace as she read, over and over: _We have brought Andraste’s Light to the Dales. None can deny her truth._

She had been staring at the inscription for far too long, but she would not turn around and return to the company of the others. It was simply a good place to camp, she told herself. They were sheltered, here, between high ledges of rock, and the fighting—the trenches and ramparts built for the shem war ( _I hope the land has consumed the Orlesians, too, swallowed them up into the Void_ ) that had become strangely silent—was before them, not behind them. But still she wished Scout Harding had not picked a place so dwarfed by the “monuments” that surrounded them now: an inescapable reminder of where she was, and why she was here ( _to save the shemlen, when I would rather leave them to destroy themselves: retribution, long past due_ ) and the banner under which she travelled. 

(That she came to the Dirth now, not as another pilgrim but as an emissary of the Chantry—as Andraste’s Herald—was perhaps the sorest wound of all.)

She refused to tear her eyes from the inscription on the statue’s pillar; she would not go sit beside the merry fire that Blackwall had started, not yet. She would not give the Warden, nor the forward scouts that had prepared for their arrival, the opportunity to see the tears of frustration that were threatening to spill from her eyes.

The note Harding had found upon her arrival: _The Inquisition has arrived. They will take the Dales and say it is the Herald of Andraste’s right. There is no such right! These lands should be yours._ When Thanduwen felt fairly certain she had more right to this land than any of them. Herald or none, a promise long broken was still a promise, sealed with the commingled blood of her people and the ancient Alamarri. She had crumpled the letter into a ball and thrown it into the campfire. ( _Let them fight over this land until there is no shemlen blood left to spill._ )

Creators, she felt so _trapped._

It did not take Solas long to join her. She had made it quite clear why she had wanted his company, and he had taken her request to heart. How many nights had they crouched beside the fire as she gave voice to the same reluctance return to the Dales on such terms, the same frustration. And he always listened. Even now, standing beside her, he waited in silence, gave her a measure of space to collect herself before he spoke just in case she needed to speak first.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked. ( _Abundantly clear by now: no need to ask whether or not she was “alright.”_ )

She tried to smile at him, reassure him; her mouth just gave another indecisive twitch instead.

“When I am here, I am in three places at once: I am in what the _shemlen_ call the Exalted Plains, but I am also a place that once was Dirthaveran, before the promise was broken, the ground stained, my people scattered. And I am in neither of those places: I am in a place of possibility, of future lost: what it could have been, had the Exalted March not come to pass, and had we kept this place as our home. I am dreaming of what this place might have become, had our inheritance not been robbed of us. It is a sad and haunted place, a scorched place. Is every part of the Dales like this?”

“They are not,” Solas said, quietly. “But they all share this horror: there is something about them like missing a stair in the dark, that dread and falling feeling. Nothing prepares you for it. It is never what you expect to find. May I?” he asked; he had reached his hand out to touch her. It hovered in the air, uncertain. (Requesting permission to cross that space between them, where the snow was still falling on a quiet night in Haven, and they held each other close—)

Thanduwen nodded; she felt Solas’ fingertips brush her cheek, uncertain, before they pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Then they found purchase on her jaw, and pressed.

She swore under her breath at the sharp ache brought on by that gentle touch; she couldn’t help but recoil from him, clutching her own hand to her face in defense, glowering at him. But he followed her, took her face in his hands. Pressed his thumbs, gently as he could, along the lines of her jaw.

He sighed, almost smiled. “You are clenching your teeth.”

“I am not,” she said, a gut reaction. She was the master of her body, and it did not do things unless she asked. (Until now, it had always obeyed her.)

“You are. It is why your jaw is tender. It is, likely, the cause of your migraine,” he said, softly. His eyes filled with shared her suffering and reflected it back to her. “It can happen, sometimes, when one is under a great deal of stress. Perhaps you do not notice, or perhaps you are doing it in your sleep.”

Thanduwen reached up, placed her hands over his own as they held her steady, rubbed tiny circles of pressure to release the locked muscles of her jaw. “Take me away,” she said, looking into his eyes, reflecting the darkness of nightfall to the east. “Tonight, take me somewhere else.”

 

_And he did: he carried her far across the dreamscape to distant shores. He dreamt her a boat. They paddled along a silt-clouded river, bluegrey, fog clouding the distance with young trees on either bank until the boat scraped a rocky shore and they walked together until she saw it, rising, out of the mist, a thing she had no name for until Solas told her: glacier. She had never seen such a wealth of ice, and the blue color of it, impossibly true. He walked her to the face of it and she could not decide which she liked better: the glacier as it loomed taller and more magnificent ahead of her or the pleasing smoothness of the stones it had left in its summertime retreat, and then they were at the face of it and Solas was guiding her through it, along some twisted paths, ice caves, meltwater rushing by beside them and she marveled at it, so vast,  so pleased to simply behold it and Solas watched her and smiled and she swore, she swore: he’d almost kissed her then._

 

But the secret smile they shared the following morning, each emerging from their separate tents, was still not so sweet as the news that came in the night from one of Harding’s scouts: _Dalish elves, sighted southwest._

The sun was still warming the frost off the ground when they left camp. Winter’s chill was spreading north across Orlais. Here in the plains the leaves of the trees had long past browned, but still they held fast to the branches of their trees, as of yet not displaced by the first heavy fall of snow. When the wind whistled up the Enavuris River, between the rock pillars and through the woods, the trees rattled.

When they left camp that morning, they did so clothed in the fur-lined cloaks that had been gifted to the Inquisition by some noble trying to curry favor. They were enchanted, allegedly to repel water, and keep the wearer protected from even the fiercest of storms. To Thanduwen, they were fussy-looking and excessively decorated, but they were undeniably warm.

They passed many other Andrastian memorials to the “heroes” of the Exalted March as they journeyed through the plains, but as they struck a course southwest, they began to see other monuments, too. These were far older, and easy to miss, for they were so nestled among the rocks and the vegetation that they seemed at first glance a natural part of the landscape. The rock pillars held between them (like giant fingers keeping them close) towering columns topped with Andruil’s messenger, the owl, leading along the path through twisted and crumbling arches of walls bowing to the earth. 

Flies buzzed above the corpses of Orlesian soldiers—Freemen or Imperials, Thanduwen cared not—and small fires dotted the paths. But all-seeing, watching high above and untouched by time: Fen’Harel, the lone wolf looking out across the landscape as though the land belonged to none but him.

_Does this land demand blood because of you, old wolf?_ she wondered, a smile curling her lips at the sight of him. _Is this the trickster’s doing_? She had never before fancied that a curse might lay upon the Dales, laid down upon it like a veil by the Creators, _if this land shall not be ours, it shall belong to no one._ She liked the thought of it, superstitious though it may be; she would leave an offering to her Gods before she left this place.

(She would pray that, for as long as the land remained stolen, the _shemlen_ who lived upon it would find no peace within it. She would—

[ _movement between the crisp dead leaves ahead, practiced to look natural; it was not—]_ )

Thanduwen threw out her arm to her side; a command. At once the footsteps of her companions behind her ceased. She tilted her head, strained her eyes against the mottled sunlight that fell through to the forest floor. The movement ahead had been subtle—barely a flicker—but she would have sworn…. 

And there it was again! Faint but distinct in the shape of the shadows.

She turned her head to the side so that she could speak softly over her shoulder: “Put down your weapons. Raise your arms. Stay at least five paces behind me, and walk slowly.”

Because not all Dalish were like Clan Lavellan. Solas had said as much when they had first met, and despite his egregious misunderstanding about most things Dalish, in this he was correct. Not all Clans were wary, or kind. There were many yet who had abandoned the covenant of the Arlathven, Clans who had not been heard from in an Age or longer, though they were known to still roam at the outer edges of the continent. Such Clans would shoot a Dalish outsider as quickly as they would shoot a _shemlen_. Thanduwen did not think it was one of _those_ Clans, but it was prudent, she thought, to be cautious.

She could not see the reactions of her companions behind her, but Solas’ displeasure spoke for all of them. “You did not hesitate this way when we met Mihris, _lethallin_.”

“Mihris was under attack,” Thanduwen responded, quietly, as she moved forward. She had raised her arms over her head in a gesture of surrender. “And she was also very plainly _alone._ We are trespassers, here, and I do not know how many are ahead.”

But all the same—for all her caution—she could not help the way she smiled (curiosity and hesitant hope) when she turned her head upwards, confident when she cried into the treetops, “Andaran atish’an, el’vhen odirthven. I am Thanduwen, Daughter of Soufei, First of Clan Lavellan. Esahn vhellan?”

But the woods were quiet. In the distance, Thanduwen could hear the call of a songbird, and the rushing of a river; she heard none of the sounds she had been trained from birth to recognize as Dalish footfalls, disguised to blend seamlessly into the sounds of the forest. She tried to keep her expression friendly, but as time wore on, it faltered; had she been mistaken? Had her eyes failed her?

A shadow passed over the sun, darkened the wood—and that half second was all the time that the Dalish scouts needed to surround them. 

Soundlessly, a hunter dropped out of the branches of the mighty trees above; from behind two archers had flanked Blackwall and Solas, and their bows were drawn. Solas and Blackwall looked distinctly displeased, though not yet alarmed. Blackwall couldn’t keep the scowl off his face, his bushy brows drawn low over his eyes; Solas’ expression was much more subtle, his chin tilted upwards in an arrogance that Thanduwen knew full well was more dangerous than it looked. Cole seemed more intrigued than anything.

“Hello. I’m Cole.”

“Cole, keep back,” Thanduwen said, but her voice was steady, her head level. She lowered her hands to her sides and lifted her own chin, displaying her vallaslin proudly as the scout stalked towards her, a blade in each of his hands.

“A child of Clan Lavellan,” the bald scout mused, tilting his head to the side, looking pointedly at her winter cloak. “Wearing _shem_ clothing and in the company of three _tor’vhen_ : an unmarked elf, and two _shemlen_. I did not know our northern sisters kept such strange company and custom.” He paused to look over her shoulder, taking stock of the men behind her. Then he turned his eyes back to her. “Where is your Clan, _friend_? And what brings you across the mountains, so far from your home roads?”

“These are my companions,” Thanduwen responded without reservation. “This is Cole, Warden Blackwall, and Solas. They will not harm you without my command.”

He snickered. “A pair of shemlen, taking orders from a Dalish girl?” the elf responded, as much amusement in his voice as disbelief. “It has been a long time since I have entered into the world of men, but it has not changed that much, I think.”

“They listen to me,” Thanduwen said. Then she reached for her left hand with her right. She could hear the archers behind her tensing, the subtle clattering of arrow on bow-shaft as they redirected their weapons towards her; she paused. But the bald elf held up his hand, held their fire, and she tugged the glove of her left hand off with her right. In the dim of the forest, the anchor shone: brilliant and glittering and green.

The bald scout looked upon her in wonder. He took two steps closer then thought better of it, sheathing his daggers at his sides. The archers behind redirected their bows towards the ground. The bald elf reached forward and took her hand gently in hers, staring transfixed at the mark. “ _Mythal’enaste_ ,” he whispered to himself. “So it is true.” Then he collected himself, shaking off his wonderment. “But what is the Inquisition doing in the Dirth? When we saw your scouts move in one week past, we feared the worst.”

“We were sent to investigate the _shemlen_ war. Our scouts only caught sight of yours last night; one of your young is being careless,” Thanduwen joked. “When I heard there was a Clan nearby, I wanted to find you; it is unlike our people to camp so near to such danger, unless great need gives them no other choice.”

“We’ve been stuck here for weeks, da’len,” the bald elf said with a grimace. “But where are my manners? I am Olafin, son of Eirlana, Hunter of Clan Lindiran. Forgive my cold welcome, lethallan, but there has been much trouble for our Clan in these parts, and we cannot be too cautious.”

But she hardly heard the rest of what she said, for his introduction was ringing in her ears like a bell. “Clan Lindiran?” she asked, a smile breaking across her face. 

( _Crimson sails of aravels, this wayward and intrepid Clan of the Dales—the scent of smoke, and the look of peace on his lined face as he taught her the words to a song she had never heard—_ )

“Does that mean—is Keeper Hawen near?”

 

Five and a half years had passed and gone since she had met Keeper Hawen. It had been a miserable summer in the Marches, full of ferocious thunder and heavy rain, hours spent digging aravels out of the mud the storms left in their wake, a stickiness in the air that persisted long past the rain, thick clouds of mosquitoes stirred up with every foot pressed into the damp earth where they laid their eggs. 

But none of that mattered. None of it bothered her in the slightest, because the summer brought with it something more significant than storms: her first Arlathvhen. 

She was nineteen, and more studious than she’d ever been. Datishan had been sent away to Clan Sabrae three years earlier (leaving her broken hearted, even if she had understood why he had to leave) and after he had gone, she had thrown herself into ancient tomes, tales of legend, and the mysteries and doctrines of the arcane. Whatever she had been before he had left, she was the clan’s First. It was a responsibility she had always taken seriously but now she did so with renewed enthusiasm. The Artlathvhen—the ten year gathering of the clans—was an opportunity to learn more: to meet new elders, to share Dalish heirlooms, to bring her studies in new and exciting directions. 

And it was, for the most part, everything she had hoped it would be: being surrounded by the brightest Dalish scholars who had come from places as distant as Rivain. But it had also meant more time spent with Ithras—Clan Lavellan’s Second—than she normally had to endure. By the time they had completed the long journey to the Arlathvhen from the Marches, her patience with him had already worn thin. So, on the second evening of the Arlathvhen, she had set out on her own. 

Hawen found her wandering among the camps, called her over to his fire to sit with his apprentices and share tales. He knew her from the moment she had introduced herself, for though her face was new to him he had known her father, Eliel, remembered from the time when he was the Second of Clan Lavellan. After offering condolences for the passing of her parents, Hawen and his First, Taven, had kept her company that night. She had listened, enraptured, as they told her how Clan Lindiran still kept to the Dales, their aravels carving paths across across their once-homeland. They told her of the beauty of Dirthavaren.

But the Dirth had turned out to be nothing like what she had expected: full of fires and flies. And yet, not a day’s walk from where the Inquisition had established a camp (unexpected, still, but the most welcome of surprises)—

“Keeper Hawen!” She was shouting from across the river at the top of her lungs, waving her arms, prancing—the others could not keep up with her, the joy in her step lengthening her stride. And Hawen, at that distance, did not recognize her; she could sense his confusion in his body language even from this distance, but it did not deter her. Olafin had climbed the pinnacles of rock with ease, his mirrored glass in hand, flashing in the winter sun as signaled to the camp— _vhallem_ _tor’vhen—_ welcome outsiders _—_ but as Keeper Hawen saw her coming closer, recognized the blue of the vallaslin on her cheeks, his face broke into a smile: this was no outsider. 

Thanduwen splashed across the small creek that separated the Dalish camp from the rest of the plains, the winterwater soaking through her boots, but she hardly felt it; she scrambled up the bank and threw herself into Hawen’s embrace. And when they parted, he wrapped his hand around her elbow and kissed their foreheads together, that old familiar Dalish greeting, and for a moment—despite the Civil War, despite the statues memorializing the theft of her people’s lands—she felt peace. She felt like _herself_.

“Thanduwen, Daughter of Soufei, and Eliel,” Hawen whispered, before releasing her arm to look her over, smiling. “Andaran atish’an, sister. I admit, when I saw Olafin’s signal, I did not expect to find one of our own come bounding out of the woods. What has brought you so far from your home roads, da’len?”

And so she told him. Introduced him to her companions, once they finally caught up with her: Blackwall, the Warden; Solas, the _Dreamer;_ Cole. But whatever questions Hawen might have had about the Inquisition, or how she had come to be a part of it, Thanduwen waived away. “We will have time for tales later, Hawen,” she said. “Olafin told us your Clan was in trouble. What can we do?”

And it was too easy then, to spend the day helping them, to banish from her mind all thoughts of Orlesians, the reason she had been sent here. She knew her advisors would disapprove, but she didn’t care. Or maybe she did: sometimes, she wanted to do what they would think was the _wrong_ thing, to prove that the Chantry did not have her undivided loyalty. In other words, to “fuck up,” to make clear she was not what they said she was, some Herald or Savior.

She had gotten a list of most-needed supplies from Nissa, and without further hesitation, had returned to Harding’s camp to bring them what they could. They did not have all the things the Dalish needed on hand—they were low on leather and furs themselves—but Thanduwen took what Harding was willing to spare (and then some.) Not an hour later they had returned to the Dalish with harts laden with lumber and herbs and iron, and a promise, _we will keep you safe._  

Leaving the Dalish to unburden and organize the supplies as they saw fit, they headed to Var Bellanaris. Her parents were not buried in a place so grand as Var Bellanaris—their resting places marked by trees along the home-roads of her kin (her father beneath a tall oak, her mother a red-berried Rowan on the slopes of the Vimmarks)—but still she felt a deep sense of homecoming, setting foot on that hallowed ground, the walls still intact from when this land had belonged to the elves. Perhaps those rumors of Dalish curses had done some good after all, for other than the angry spirits (which were banished with ease) the burial ground was untouched. 

Afterwards they had stalked across the plains of Enavuris, where wild halla still roamed along the riverbanks, searching for the _hanal’ghilan_ that Ithiren had mentioned. When they found it, the fear was plain in its eyes. Its ears stood up, its joints coiled; the halla prepared to spring away. Ithiren’s fear’s had been right: the poor beast had no doubt been hunted by the Orelesians who had come here for war and conquest.

“But you were too fast, weren’t you, _ina’lan’ehn_?” she whispered softly, undulating the pitch of her voice as Datishan had taught her long ago, walking towards the _hanal’ghilam_ as the others watched at a distance. Clicking her tongue softly. Half-hunched, making herself small and unthreatening. Reaching out to brush the halla’s neck just so as she slipped a lead over its head, worn leather dyed red and embossed with Dalish knots, a decorative and handsome thing, befitting of the creature that now wore it.

She continued to speak to it, soft and soothing things; her Elvhen was still not as good as Solas, but she recited to the creature lines of poems and songs as Cole came forward, his eyes wide with wonder. They had brought a handful of small flowers with them, provided by Ithiren: delicate, sweet-tasting blossoms, saved from that year’s spring. Cole offered them to the halla as Thanduwen continued to brush her hands along the creatures back. 

The _hanal’ghilam_ took them, then began to snuffle wetly along Cole’s arms and up his face, perhaps puzzled at the scent of him (for whom did not find Cole puzzling?) only to nibble gently at the pale gold stands of his hair. And Cole laughed and it was such a precious and innocent sound, and her heart felt so _full_. She had never heard him laugh like that before. 

"They are old," Cole had said. "Lingering from a lost time, diminished in stature but not grace, light as the kiss of the first breeze of spring."

When they returned the _hanal’ghilam_ to Clan Lindiran’s the sun was low in the sky; darkness was not long off. But they spent the last few hours of daylight providing what assistance they could. Blackwall, handy as always with tools and carpentry, helped with the repairs to their aravels, reinforcing the joints of the wheels; Solas helped Nissa sort the herbs and prepare tinctures and salves. Cole, much to his delight, was invited by Ithiren to help feed the halla. Thanduwen spent the sunset with Hawen, discussing the best way to help the Dalish out of the plains and get them away from the frontline of the Civil War.

“You have put an old man’s heart at ease, da’len,” Hawen said, smiling at her, bowing his head in thanks. “Please. Accept our hospitality for the evening. With what you have brought us, we have plenty of food to spare; join us for an evening meal, and camp beside us tonight. The _tor’vhen_ are welcome as well. They have proven themselves trustworthy; or, in the least, loyal enough to you that we may allow their presence.”

And so as darkness fell, Clan Lindiran and their guests collected around the fire. It was by no means a lavish meal that they shared, but it was satisfying: fish freshly caught from the river, and vegetables pickled for the winter season. Someone produced a bottle of strong honey liquor, and that warmed the mood considerably. By the end of the night, Blackwall was joking merrily with the hunters. Thanduwen had somehow collected a group of the children around her, and by the light of the fire was telling them stories she had learned from Clan Lavellan’s storyteller, and though the stories were familiar to her they were new to the children, who squealed and giggled with delight while she recounted them. 

The mood was infectious; among them, only Solas seemed to be immune. He was polite, and throughout the evening she saw him engaging in discussions with many members of Clan Lindiran, none of which seemed to be particularly heated. But when she glanced up at him between the stories she told the children, something about him looked despondent, melancholy. She could not say what it was, and she did not get a chance to ask him; he disappeared into his tent before the Dalish children were ushered into their aravels for the evening.

But she did not let his gloom perturb her for long, for this much was true: she had not lived a day so full of warmth and delight since she had joined the Inquisition. When she had been named Inquisitor, her greatest fear was that accepting such a position would be a betrayal to her people: that it would bring undeserved violence upon them, drive them from their lands and into hiding. Today, it had done the opposite. She had used the power she had been given—unasked for though it was—to help her people. And when the Inquisition moved out of the area, when their business in the Dirth was concluded, she would have her scouts help guide the Dalish safely out of the lands disturbed by the Civil War, and accompany them to safe roads. 

That night, when she lay down to sleep, she felt more peaceful and content than she had in many moons.

 

Later that evening, some sound, some _feeling_ , woke her out of her blissful slumber and propelled her into alertness. She could not say what it was, exactly, that had woke her; for a long time, she lay still and silent, listening for unusual sounds in the night. Clan Lindiran was not her own but after the day’s events she was just as fiercely protective of them, and as she listened she could hear Hawen’s words of caution about the dangers prowling the Dirth. Had one of the undead wandered into the camp? Or had the spirits they had slain in the Var Bellanaris come back for a reckoning?

(Had the Freemen, defiant of the Inquisition’s presence, followed her here to cause trouble, to eliminate those who “ _had no right_ ” to this land? She would _never_ forgive herself—)

But as she lay in the dark all she could hear were the quiet sounds of night: the rushing of the Enavuris River, the last hissing and spitting of the fire as it diminished. Then—she suppressed a laugh—distantly, and muffled by the tent’s canvas, she heard Blackwall’s snores. 

But then—there!—footfalls. Soft and careful, and by now, familiar enough that she knew whom they belonged to before parting the flaps of her tent.  But it was unlike him, to be awake in the dead of night like this; he cherished the time he spent sleeping, wandering the Fade. She remembered the expression of melancholy on his face earlier, lit up by the light of the Dalish fire.

Thanduwen drew her winter cloak over her shoulders, slipped into her shoes and stepped outside. Solas stood with his back to her, gazing into the fire with his hands clasped behind is back. There was something wrong in the angle of his shoulders: hunched, defeated. But he turned to the sound of her tent being disturbed, the high planes of his face kissed by the light of the fire’s embers. 

“Oh dhea’lam,” he said as she came to stand beside him. “You should be resting. The sun will not rise for several hours.”

She knew as much from her first glance skyward, tracing the paths of the stars and the moon in the night sky. “I could say the same to you,” Thanduwen said, her voice gentle. In the firelight Solas’ expression twisted, a grimace flashing over his face. “What is troubling you, lethallin? You looked unsettled earlier, at dinner.”

He turned to her at once, his lips just parted, before he shook his head and turned back to the fire. “I had hoped you would not notice. I know how much this day has meant to you. But that is a trifle compared to what disturbs me now. I…” he began softly, then raised his head abruptly, interrupted by a distant sound. She followed his line of sight. There, barely visible against the shadows of the rock that ringed the Dalish camp, she could make out of the silhouette of one of Lindiran’s hunters by the bow he held, keeping watch as the rest of the Clan slept. Another scout had joined him; they exchanged words. A moment later, they both crept of in the direction of the riverbank. The corners of Solas’ mouth twitched into a frown. 

He turned to her abruptly. “Will you walk with me?” he asked. “Near Var Bellanaris, beside the river, there was a lovely grove of aspens. I would welcome the opportunity to stretch my legs.”

He knew how she loved the aspen trees, rarer in the warm north where she’d been raised. She loved their smooth, silvery green bark, and the black eye-shaped scars that marked their white trunks when they lost their branches. She loved their heart shaped leaves, and they way they goldened in autumn. And she sensed he wanted to leave the camp to go out-of-earshot of the Dalish; she guessed, rightly, that the offer to visit the grove was his way of apologizing, thanking her for indulging his distrust.

“Alright,” she consented all the same, and followed him away from the encampment. 

The moon was low in its arc across the sky, and would soon dip below the horizon. But it was fat, and bright enough that they could pick their way across the rocky landscape without great difficulty. They waked in silence, flanked on either side by the rushing of the great Enavuris River and its tributary creek. Somehow, though she could make out far less of it, she found the Dirth to be far more beautiful under cover of nightfall. Darkness, it seemed, hid at least some of the markers of the Dirth’s bloody history: all she saw were silvery shadows, the shimmering of moon on the river reflected onto the smooth rock pillars. 

When they reached the aspen grove she sat with her back against the grandest of the trees, lifted her face to peer into its branches. Nearer to the river, and less protected from the winds, these trees had lost their leaves, but she admired the shapely lines of the branches against the stars. To her surprise, Solas eased himself to the hard ground beside her. 

For a while they sat without speaking, taking comfort in the ambient warmth of each other’s bodies. Thanduwen did not want to push him. But after some time had passed—her eyes still turned towards the stars—she asked him, “Would you like to tell me what is bothering you?”

Solas was a long time answering; she did not need to look at him to sense his indecision. Finally—surrendering—he said, “I may have a favor to ask.”

Thanduwen couldn’t help but grin, shook her head gently. “You needn’t trouble yourself over asking a favor of me, Solas. You should know by now all you need to do is name it.”

In the periphery of her vision, she saw the briefest of smiles flicker across his features. Then, solemnly, (his voice sounding so _weary_ ) he said, “As I slept, wandering the Fade, I heard a cry of pain—a plea for help.” He paused, swallowed. “One of my oldest friends is in danger. They are being held by mages, not far from the Dalish encampment.”

Thanduwen turned to him, alarmed. “By friend, you mean—”

“A spirit of Wisdom,” Solas said. “They have been summoned against their will, an experience that has proved both painful and traumatic. They are asking for my help to gain their freedom so that they might return to the Fade. It is possible that the mages who summoned them seek information they do not wish to give, and intend to torture them.”

She looked at him in the dark, incredulous. “But if they’re here—if they are so close—what are we doing here?” she asked, motioning around the grove. She turned her face back in the direction they had come, rose to her feet. “We should go now—what are we waiting for?”

Standing, with Solas’ face upturned to her, she only just could make out his features (if not his eyes), and his expression was one of wonderment, humbled awe. He shook his head, “Sit down,” he said, motioning beside her. Still she hesitated. Only when he reached out in the dark and took her hand, tugging it gently, did she join him once more on the ground. As they sat side by side, his thumb traced spirals on the back of her hand. 

“I had thought to go now—to go myself. But we are too close to the Dalish camp. I watched their scout wake others in the aravels and go northeast, across the tributary. Undoubtedly they are aware of what has happened. And though I doubt they will intervene, if we go now, in the dark, we stand as much a chance of hurting my friend as freeing it, and an equal chance of wounding a curious, well-intentioned Dalish in the process. I do not wish to heighten the danger posed both to the Inquisition and your people by this threat. The Veil is already weakened from pulling Wisdom through, and the spilling of fresh blood may attract more malevolent spirits.”

Thanduwen was reminded of the spirits she had encountered at Crestwood: despondent. How she had wanted to help them, and how Vivienne had scorned her. She wanted to help Solas now, not only to soothe his own distress but because she _knew_. She had seen what it was like, wisps floating through the ruined shacks like Tranquil. And she was touched, all the same, that the fear of bringing more violence to Clan Lindiran had stayed him from setting out at once; it was a restraint she was not sure he would have been capable of before they had met.

“First thing in the morning, then,” she said, insistently. “At first light. I’ll warn Hawen—I’lll tell him we are taking care of the situation, and to keep his scouts clear of the area. Then we will go free your friend.”

Solas looked at her in the dark, but with his face to the moon all she could make out was a silvery halo around his head. He was indecisive, though she could not say why. Then, it became clear: he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her temple, just below the line of her hair. “Thank you,” he breathed against her skin, before settling back against her side. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

It had been like this since she had come back from Crestwood: fleeting moments of intimacy, before one of them thought better and retreated. Solas had asked for time to think. She intended to give it to him. But the longer he needed, the deeper they sank into an uncertainty where neither of them were sure how to act around the other. It would have been wiser, to keep their distance. Yet here they were, huddled close in the moonlight, holding hands.

For once, she did not discourage it.

 

The next morning, Thanduwen woke to the smell of woodsmoke, a crick in her neck. The sun had not yet pierced the sky, but already the darkness of nightfall was receding, the stars fading as the world around them blushed rose with the first hint of dawn. She raised her head, only to realize she’d fallen asleep on Solas’ shoulder sometime after they had returned to the Dalish camp. 

“Good morning,” Solas said. He looked very much awake.

“Did you sleep at all?” Thanduwen asked, her voice hoarse from too much smoke, and groggy.

“No,” he replied, confirming her suspicions. “I meditated, briefly entering the Fade to reassure Wisdom, but they have grown silent.” The worry on his face was plain.

Thanduwen rubbed the sleep from the corners of her eyes, turned around. There was neither movement nor sound from the tent Blackwall had shared with Cole, but up ahead, the Dalish camp was beginning to stir. Red aravel sails danced in the light breeze coming up the river, and figures moved in morning routines that had once been her own.

Thanduwen placed a hand gently on Solas' shoulder. “Wake the others,” she said. “We will go as soon as they are prepared to leave. I will speak with Keeper Hawen, and tell him to keep his hunters clear of the area.” Then she rose. But before she could leave his side, Solas had reached out, tangled his fingers in hers. 

( _the kiss he had placed to the line of her hair,his mouth so soft—_ )

“Ma serannas, Thanduwen,” he said, a weight to his voice she could not remember hearing before. “Many would not have even considered such a request.”

And for a moment, all she could to was stand there, struck still by the depth of his gratitude. “Ara melava son’ganem, lethallin,” she barely managed. “I would abandon no friend of yours to torment nor death while there is strength within me to deliver them.” She hesitated, then reached out with her free hand, brushed her knuckles gently along the cut of his cheekbones. She opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it—dropped her hand from his face, untangled their ands. “Go. “Ready Blackwall and Cole.”

Unspoken, but still on the tip of her tongue as she moved in Hawen’s direction: 

_What strength I possess is owed to you._

 

Keeper Hawen greeted her with a smile, and a mischievous, twinkling sort of grin. “On dhea, da’len,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

Though she had nothing to be ashamed of, still she colored at the suggestion in his tone. It had no doubt been clear to all in the Dalish camp that there was a fondness between her and her unmarked elf—her _tor’vhen,_ as they called him. At least it was Clan Lindaran who they had happened upon in the Dirth—other clans, who were less tolerant of alienage elves (those who considered them just as bad as the _shemlen_ , betrayers of the Old Ways) would have been less kind to discover her affections. (It would have been no use, she knew, explaining to any of them that Solas was not in fact from an alienage.)

“Well enough, hah’ren,” Thanduwen said, clearing her throat. The smoke from the fire still tickled the back of her throat. “But we woke—we heard something strange in the night, to the north, on the other side of the creek.” As innocently as she could, she asked, “Did your scouts… see anything? In the night?”

He gave her that withering look that only Dalish _hah’rens_ could manage: it creased the weathered lines of their face, scrunched his vallaslin. A mix of chastisement and amusement, making clear he saw straight through her feigned innocence. Then he sniffed, moved closer to her so she could follow the line of his arm as he pointed to a rock formation on the other side of the tributary.

“There was a disturbance in the night, over there,” he said. “It was far enough that my scouts did not feel the need interfere—in any case they couldn’t, not without better cover on such a bright evening. They reported a group of shemlen stirring up some mischief—magic, by the way they lit up the night.” Then, he peered at her out of the corner of his eye. “I told them by morning a solution might present itself. Was I correct in my guess?”

Thanduwen gave a curt nod. “I will look into it, Keeper Hawen, and see to it the situation is resolved. Thank you, for allowing the matter to be dealt with by the Inquisition.” Then, her expression softened; she hoped to return to the encampment again, but depending on how the next few days unfolded, it was possible this would be the last she saw of him. “Perhaps we will meet again, before the Inquisition moves out of Dirthavaren.”

Hawen gave a chuckle. “Never before have I been thanked for pushing my problems unto others.” Then, he looked on her with sympathy. “I am sorry to hear you will have to intervene in the _shem_ war, da’len. It must be very difficult, to bring peace to them when they offered us none. And that is but a fraction of the burden you must carry, with that mark upon your hand.” He raised a hand, cupped the side of her face. “Return here, if you can, before you depart from Dirthaveran. We will break bread together once more. I am sure the children would like to bid you farewell.”

“And I, them,” Thanduwen said, with a smile, remembering fondly the children’s excitement. It was a memory she would cherish. “I cannot express what your hospitality has meant to me, Hah’ren. It has given me new strength. It was… good, to feel as though I was back home with my own Clan again.”

“I am sure they miss you greatly, da’len,” Hawen said. “Just as I am certain that Keeper Deshanna grows more proud of you by the day. May the grace of the Dalish go with you…wherever your path leads.”

 

By the time she returned from her talk with Hawen, the others were already prepared to leave. Solas stood erect, coiled; Cole, though his posture was less severe, looked equally agitated. She supposed—both because of his own nature, and the empathy he felt for Solas—Wisdom’s plight had affected him deeply. Blackwell was chewing on some jerky, looking more alert by the minute. (That had been, so far, one of the greatest surprises about him: Blackwall was very much a morning person.)

Without further ado forded the creek, and set out in the direction Hawen had indicated. 

It was not long before they reached their destination. Thanduwen could smell it before she could hear it: that burned, metallic scent of spent magic. It was faint, but distinct, and as they approached it was matched by the sound of crackling lightning, the snapping sound of ice shattering. Solas heard it, too. They hastened their pace as they rounded the perimeter of a large pillar—they were both struck motionless at the sight they met on the other side.

A detached part of her could not help but notice how context made meaning, even as she sucked in her breath, her steps arrested. Because it was strange, wasn’t it? By now it was something she had seen many times over: a demon of Pride, bent in agony beneath the assault of magic. Only different this time because she knew what it had once been. Only tugging at her heartstrings because of the growl that wrenched itself from Solas’ throat, a sound of deepest lamentation and anguish. 

A whisper, a whimper: “ _My friend._ ”

And she recognized in that mourning the same note of despair she had heard in her own voice, when she had met Solas in the rotunda the night she had learned of the bandits attacking Clan Lavellan.

“Howls in my mouth where there should only be lessons, can’t change this world but it wants to change me,” Cole whined, and he was trembling, disraught at the sight in front of them. “They are hurting, but they do not want to hurt others! We need to help!”

“Er, Solas,” Blackwall said. “Your… _friend._ Is it supposed to look so much like a demon?”

Thanduwen swiftly interjected, both to save Blackwall from Solas’ temper and to spare Solas the burden of answering. “They were once a spirit of Wisdom. They’ve been pulled through the Veil against their will. They don't want to be here; they’re… traumatized.”

“A spirit becomes a demon when denied its original purpose,” Solas spat, practically snarling at Blackwall over his shoulder. “They want no part of this world; those mages brought them here against their wishes.”

Blackwall did not look particularly reassured; he’d put his hand on the hilt of his sword. “But this cursed place is already crawling with demons. Why would the mages want to bring through another?”

The line of Solas’ mouth twitched, his eyes narrowed at the mage which now approached them. “Let us ask.”

One of the mages had left the summoning circle and had walked towards them. He was round-faced, and looked exhausted, a fine bead of sweat on the waxy skin of his forehead. “Mages!” he cried, relief in his voice. “Do you have any lyrium? We were fighting that demon through the night; most of us our stretched past our limits.”

“You summoned that demon!” Solas accused. “Except it was a spirit of Wisdom at the time. You made them kill; you twisted them against their purpose.”

The mage raised his hands defensively, began to back away; it had become clear to him that Solas was not the ally he had hoped for. He stammered. “I—I understand how it might be confusing to someone who has not studied demons, but after you help us I can—”

“We are not here to help you,” Solas seethed. 

Thanduwen could see the altercation budding between the two mages; she moved forward, placing herself physically between Solas and what she could now see was an ex-Circle mage. “Solas, focus. We came here to help your friend. What can we do to help?”

“ _Help_ it?” the Circle mage cried. “You can't be serious! I was one of the foremost experts on demons in the Kirkwall Circle, and if a lifetime of study has taught me anything, it is that they _cannot_ be trusted, never mind _befriended—_ ” 

“Shut up,” Solas commanded, and the edge in his voice had the mage silenced, swallowing nervously. Silas reached out for Thanduwen’s shoulder and attempted to clear her out of his path. The gentleness of that gesture was almost frightening, so different from the sharpness in his voice. When she did not yield he merely circled around her, stalking towards the mage as he hurled accusations at him. “You summoned them to protect you from the bandits.”

“I… yes,” the mage said, backing up towards the summoning circle. 

“Solas,” Thanduwen warned. The mage was weak, terrified, confused; Thanduwen did not want to, but she pitied him. He had said he was from the Kirkwall Circle, and that association had only recently taken on fresh, horrifying new meaning to her. She wanted to help Solas’ friend; she did not want to punish this man for his ignorance, more the Chantry’s fault than his own.

But her words did little to deter Solas. “You bound them to obedience then commanded them to kill. _That_ is when they turned.” 

Solas' chastisement was interrupted by another howl from the Pride demon ahead. He turned his head towards it, and Thanduwen could see the way that sound wounded him. In an instant, he forgot the mage, turning to her instead.

“The summoning circle,” he said. “We break it, we break the binding. No orders to kill, no conflict with its nature, no demon.”

“ _What?_ ” the Kirkwall mage squawked. “The binding is the only thing keeping the demon from killing us! Whatever it was before, it is a monster now.” 

“Inquisitor, _please,_ ” Solas begged. 

He needn’t have. “Cole, Blackwall!” Thanduwen said, even as she was reaching behind her to free her staff from its brace on her back. She had learned about summoning circles as part of her training as First. Though the practice had fallen out of favor with most Clans, learning how to trap spirits was still a part of her education. She knew equally well how to free spirits, in a manner of speaking, for the weaknesses of such circles were taught as a precaution. Above all, there was one thing Keeper Deshanna had wanted her to know about summoning circles:

They did not respond well to physical stress.

When Cole and Blackall came close, she pointed ahead of them at one of the stalactite-like formations surrounding the demon. “Those pillars are reinforcing the summoning circle. They will shatter under enough brute force. Watch your back, defend yourself as necessary, but _do not_ strike the demon,” she said, emphatically. She added, if a bit hesitantly, “I will try to keep it’s attention on me.”

Cole nodded enthusiastically in agreement, his daggers already drawn. Blackwell looked decidedly less thrilled by the plan. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Inquisitor,” he said, but his words were less a warning than a resigned defeat. He did not like her plan, but he’d go along with it, for now.  

There was another roar ahead. The mage who had approached them fled beyond and past them, exhausted past his ability to pull anymore magic through the Veil, even in a place such as this where it was stretched so thin. “We must hurry!” Solas cried, and sprang forward, freeing his own staff out from its brace and rushing towards the summoning circle. Cole sprinted after him; Blackwall armed himself with his axe and shield and strode behind. 

But Thanduwen did not follow; instead, she raced around the perimeter of the summoning circle, staff in hand, trying not to think too hard about the foolishness of what she was about to do, fearing she would lose her courage. It was not the first Pride demon they had faced, but it was the first she was going to attempt to distract instead of subdue, because she could not, in good conscience, ask Blackwall (or even Cole) to break the summoning circle while enduring an onslaught of attacks she had forbidden them from retaliating against.

[The task before her: how to distract the distraught spirit without wounding it?]

She attuned her breathing to the pace of her strides as she approached the riverbank; she wove as strong a barrier as she could around her body.

[The answer: the river.]

Thanduwen had never been particularly skilled at water magic. She had heard tales growing up of Dalish Clans that had taken to the seas instead of the land, that built ships that looked like aravels but flew over the water twice as swift, propelled by the power of  mages who could manipulate the tide as easily as Thanduwen could pull lightning out of the air. But no one in Clan Lavellan had ever been so gifted, and there was no one to teach them. Ice was another matter; you didn’t have to know much about water to call on the magic of the fade to freeze it, solidify it. But water was tricky.

All the same, the basis of most Dalish magic was practical magic. _This is how you call upon magic to start a fire over dry tinder. This is how you lay down a glyph to mark your path if you lose your way._ All Dalish children were taught these tricks. Most Dalish children, even if they did not go on to be great mages, were possessed of enough magical talent to accomplish simple spells such as these, even if it was only possible with great concentration, or great need. 

Another lesson all Dalish children were taught: _This is how you move water quickly to stop a wild fire from spreading to the aravels._

Clan Lavellan could not weaponize water. They could not draw it out of the air. But she wouldn’t have been any kind of Dalish mage at all if she couldn’t simply _move_ it. 

Thanduwen reached the banks of the great, wide Enavuris river and spun her staff about her body—a flourish that would have made even Dorian proud—before she pivoted sharply, sweeping her staff through the air in line with her momentum. And from the river rose a ribbon of froth and foam that cut across the summoning circle and splashed the Pride Demon solidly on the back of its head, sloshed down the spires of its back, crackling all the way with the ambient electricity the Pride demon wore like a shroud.

The demon seemed more surprised than wounded—after all, Thanduwen’s intention was more to distract that harm. But it was also clearly not pleased by the unexpected shower.

Behind the demon, Blackwall and Cole were hacking away at the second of the summoning circle pillars. Solas, with the utmost look of concentration on his face, was blasting a third with sharp shards of ice. The pride demon paid them no mind. All seven of its eyes were trained on Thanduwen, blinking, assessing how much of a threat she posed. But it only paused for a moment—it made up its mind very quickly—before it gave a terrifying roar that was so loud and so forceful she could feel the demon’s breath billowing the cloth of her winter cloak.

It raised its arm; Thanduwen dodged forward just in time to avoid being smacked with a whip of pure electrical energy. She could feel it crackling and spitting in the air above her as she knelt among the smooth rocks of the riverbank. But when she raised her head, she discovered that the demon had turned its attention back to Solas; without thinking, without preparing, she shouted at the creature as she pelted it with another ribbon of water. This time, her aim was rewarded: she hit the demon square in the face.

The demon shook its head in confusion and annoyance. Thanduwen took the opportunity to count: three pillars left still standing in the summoning circle. But the time it took for her to take stock of the others’ progress was all the time the pride demon needed to pull back its arm and send another ribbon of electrical energy whipping through the air, cutting in her direction.

The barrier she’d woven earlier absorbed most of the blow. It stopped her from being shocked.

It did not, however, prevent her from being lifted off her feet and thrown clean into the deep river behind her.

And Creators, that river is _cold_ ; and suddenly it is no surprise she pissed the demon off so royally by dumping buckets of it over its head. Fed by the snow from the caps of the Frostbacks, the water is fresh and wintry, and so frigid she can feel it in her teeth. Her lungs seize, recoiling in horror at the water’s piercing bite. 

Thanduwen broke the surface of the river spluttering madly, pride wounded more than her body, but a dangerous chill in her bones. She would not last long if she stayed in the water—and the cold breeze blowing against her river soaked skin was almost as bad as the water itself. “ _Teldirthalelan_.” She cursed her own stupidity under her breath, hissing as she scrambled towards the shore. Up ahead, she could see Blackwall smash the third summoning stone with a fierce blow of his axe; it shattered, small shards glittering in the winter sun. Only two pillars remained, but they were both close to the riverbank, very near to the spot where she has lured the pride demon. 

She stumbled up the bank. Once the ground was solid beneath her, she ran (or tried to run, legs numb from the cold of the river, winter cloak sopping wet and weighing on her—she cursed bitterly the noble who had declared the thing _water proof_ ) directly at the pride demon. One hand clutched her staff, but the other fumbled clumsily at the closure of her cloak. It is dead weight. Soaked and frigid, it is no longer of any use to her. 

But as she does, the pride demon turns its seven eyes to Blackwall, and raises his hand.

And in truth, there was little love between her and the Grey Warden. No animosity, but no fondness either; even in all the miles to Crestwood and back, they had never quite seen eye to eye, never figured out how to get along with one another. But she knew that according to Blackwall—really, to anyone other than herself, or Solas, or Cole—this was a fool’s errand. They had taken a risk that very well might not pay off. And she would not let Blackwall, who had been nothing but loyal to her, suffer for her orders.

The pride demon trained its eyes on the Warden; twinned blossoms of electricity gathered in each of its palms as it prepared to strike. Thanduwen did not give the demon the time it needed to connect. She swept the dampened cloak off her shoulders (already stiff, beginning to freeze in the winter chill) and in one sharp movement—trusting her body, trusting the coordination between her magic and her eyes—hoists the wet cloak into the air with a dispel charm funneled from the edge of her staff, directed just so—

Just before the pride demon had the time to pull the electricity out of the air, Thanduwen’s cloak landed firmly over its face with a wet _slop_. When the demon slammed its fists to the ground a moment later, the lines of its lightning missed Blackwall by mere feet, shattered a summoning stone instead. 

Pride brought its hands to its face, howling with rage, tearing her winter cloak to wet shreds, but by then it was too late: with a grunt, Solas and Cole shattered the last of the summoning stones binding the demon to its perverted purpose, its twisted form. 

There’s a snapping, a crackle, and the sound of a dozen sopping-wet tatters meeting the ground. And then, where once was a demon, now there is something else: a dark form, glowing from a light within, in the shape of a woman.

Blackwall rushed over to Thanduwen. “Maker’s balls, Inquisitor,” murmured under his breath as he unfastened his own cloak, wrapping it around her shoulders. She must look quite a sight: hair stuck to her face in wet strands, the cold air of winter beginning to frost her eyebrows and eyelashes, and trembling in the cold, now that the adrenaline has worn off. She thanked Blackwall, offering him a bashful, apologetic look. His cloak was far too big for her, and it smelt of his sweat, but it was warm from the energy the Warden had spent in a battle he had not wished to fight, but fought regardless, at her behest. She is grateful.

Solas scrambled over rock and grass to the spirit’s side. Thanduwen watched him as he knelt beside the ghostly figure on the shore, reluctant to intrude. They deserved, she thought, some privacy. She could not hear the words they spoke, but their exchange was brief—little time had passed the spirit disintegrated before their eyes as if it was no more than ash, scattered in the wind. At first, she did not know what that meant. But Solas’ face—burdened with more despair and sorrow and grief than she had ever seen him carry—made the meaning quite clear.

She rushed towards him as best she could. It was not as graceful as she might have hoped. Her feet were still clumsy with cold, and she stumbled until she reached him, dropped to her knees beside him.

“Solas,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even through her shivering. “Ar ame ir abelas.”

“Tel abelas,” he responded in kind, though his voice was quiet, defeated. “We helped Wisdom. In the end, they were at peace. We—” but then Solas turned his head towards her, and it was as though he was seeing her for the first time, or at least noticing the state she was in. “You’re freezing,” he said simply, and reached out to her. His hand came to rest on her cheek; it was warm. A tingle of pleasure travelled down her spine as he pushed his fingers through her hair, drying it with his magic, defrosting her brow. She felt the warmth in the tips of her ears; her quivering lessened considerably.

But the moment of peace was soon interrupted by the Kirkwall mage. He had found his way back to the summoning circle. “Thank you,” he said, emphatically. “We wouldn’t have risked the summoning circle, but the roads are too dangerous to travel unprotected.”

Both elves looked up at him. In an instant, Solas’ hand was gone from her face, the warmth along with it. He stood, stalked towards the mage. “ _You_ ,” he seethed. “You tortured and killed my friend.”

“We didn’t know it was a spirit!” the mage said, raising its hands defensively and backing away. “The book said it could help us!”

The mage was terrified, and with good reason; his magic was spent, he was no match for Solas,  whose posture and gait carried a promise of violence. Thanduwen would have thought nothing of it if she hadn’t seen Solas’ fingers coming around his back to grip the handle of his staff once more, seen his aura crackling with mana the closer he came to the Kirkwall mage.

But though this mage had put Solas through such pain—and she felt for Solas, she did—Thanduwen did not wish to see him harmed. Not like this. He was weak, and defenseless, and they were better than that, weren’t they? They had to be. Better than cutting down unarmed opponents in a fit of pique. The Chantry had spread lies about the nature of spirits and demons for so long that those lies were taken as fact, unquestioned. And in a Circle—especially in Kirkwall’s Circle, in the Gallows—where likely the only spirits mages met were the ones that they encountered during their Harrowing, Thanduwen could not blame this man for not knowing the difference. Before she had met Solas, she might have made the same mistake. 

“Solas!” she admonished. “Lanasta ish.”

Solas paused. The mage before him trembled. Ever so slightly, Solas turned his face in her direction, enough to see her out of the corner of his eye but not enough for her to make out much more than the line of his impossible cheekbones. 

Thanduwen raised herself clumsily out of her kneeling position, followed him across the barren and scorched space that was once the summoning circle. Reached out. Placed a hand, ever so gently, on his shoulder. “Tel eolas banal on’el,” she said, softly. “Tel’harth.” _He doesn’t understand._

“Never again,” Solas whispered under his breath. Then—and how was it that so small a gesture could feel like a knife between her ribs?—he shrugged his shoulders, unseating her hand from its perch. “I need time alone.” And without so much as a goodbye he walked past the Kirkwall mage, and out across the Plains.

Thanduwen wanted to call after him, but the shape of his name died on her lips; instead she watched helplessly as his figure retreated into the distance. That he had walked so easily away from her wounded her, but she quelled that part in her that wanted to cry out: his grief was his own to contend with, freed from the burden of her own. She wished she could have held him, consoled him. She might, yet, when he returned. But for now the kindest thing she could do was give him the space he needed, no matter how deeply she wanted to comfort him as he had comforted her.

 

They escorted the offending mages back to Harding’s camp. For though she had spared them from Solas’ vengeance, she would not grant them their freedom—as former Circle mages, they were the Inquisition’s responsibility. They would be escorted back to Skyhold (as much for their protection as the protection of others) with the next Inquisition party moving West. Hopefully upon arrival Grand Enchanter Fiona would be able to permanently discourage them from repeating the foolishness they had attempted here, in Dirthavaren.

By nightfall, Solas had not returned to camp. That first night, Thanduwen kept vigil beside the fire, skinning the pelts off wolves to keep Clan Lindiran warm in the journey out of the Dirth. She kept raising her eyes to the plains; she expected, each time, to see Solas wandering back to camp.

But he did not. 

Days passed. On the ninth of Wintermarch—one week after Solas had left—the Dirth saw its first snow. It colored Victory Rise as it mixed with the blood of dead Imperial soldiers, dead Freemen. But without him, it felt unremarkable; she always felt cold. The snow made no difference. After trudging out of the Enavuris all those days ago, she’d never warmed.

It wasn’t just that he was _gone._ It was that he was gone, _here._ He had left her with no one but Blackwall and Cole for company in the middle of Dirthaveran, with ruins of the life her people once had (stolen by the very people she had come here to protect—!) Each statue of Andraste they happened upon (you could hardly spit without hitting one) a testament to conquerors long dead, her rage deepened. She did not know how long she could endure in this place, but still lingered, for she was more loathe to leave him behind.

Patience became anxiety; anxiety turned to despair. She began to suspect he would not return at all. She did not like to think whether this was because he was incapable of returning—if some ill fate had befallen him while he was alone—or because he had simply decided not to return to her. She was not sure which thought was worse.

If she had known then what she knew now, would she have let Solas murder that poor Kirkwall mage? She did not think so. Still, it was a test she was glad she did not have to face. The days of his absence multiplied, and with each day, she felt her will weaken.

The longer he was gone, the harder it became to hope for his return, and she feared for what that meant, for he had been with her from the very beginning. She didn’t need him—this she knew. She had been with the Inquisition long enough now to believe in her own strength. But Solas had helped her find a kind of resilience within her, the ability to defy not Corypheus nor the Freemen nor Orlais but the Inquisition itself, and the pressure it put upon her season after season to _become_. Solas helped her not to lose herself, moored her so firmly to herself. Without him she feared she would wake up one morning a stranger, changed by inches just as the sandstone pillars had been weathered in the wind and the rain of the Dirth, until her shape had been altered completely and she was unrecognizable, even to herself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Andaran atish’an, el’vhen odirthven. | Hello, people of the Dales.  
> Esahn vhellan? | Whom do I greet?  
> Tor’vhen | literally “outside people,” outsiders, not our people.Mythal’enaste | Myth’s blessing.   
> Ina’lan’ehn | Beautiful  
> On dhea’lam | Good evening.  
> Ma serannas | Thank you  
> Ara melava son’ganem. | My time is well spent. (You’re very welcome.)  
> On dhea | Good morning  
> Ma serannas sal | My thanks again.  
> “Teldirthalelan.” | Stupid. lit, One who will not learn.  
> Lanasta ish | Show him mercy/forgive him.  
> Tel eolas banal on’el. | He doesn’t know any better.  
> Tel’harth | He does not understand.
> 
> Translations as usual are courtesy of the fabulous work done by fenxshiral at Project Elvhen.


	16. Perigee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps the most prideful folly since waking from all those long years of slumber was to think he could protect himself from this.

On the nineteenth of Wintermarch, Scout Harding proved herself the bravest among them—save, perhaps, their Inquisitor—for it was she who spoke the words that no other dared voice.

They had cleansed the Freemen’s curse from the Orlesian ramparts; they had burned the bodies. Victory Rise, Fort Revasan, Citadel du Corbeau, and other nameless bloodied and war torn places, now safe from the scourge of undead, if not from the violence for which those places had been erected to begin with. Altogether too many Orlesians, none of whom she trusted to hold to the terms of their truce now that the Freemen had been defeated.

They had found the body of Valorin; they had followed his notes to the Shrine to Sylaise, cloistered upriver. Guarded by Fen’Harel, but not _well_ : the sacred space defiled. Thanduwen had killed the Freemen who dared to trespass there; they had left their bodies to burn just outside the threshold, a warning against further intrusions. They had reclaimed the talisman Valorin had sought. They carried both Valorin and the talisman home to his family: to Clan Lindiran, to Keeper Hawen, and the boy ( _too young_ ) was laid to rest.

And always—worse as time trudged onward—she was short of breath. Chest tight—with fear. With dread. Too many cold things with their fingers wrapped around her ribs. 

Boys left to perish for the foolishness of their pride, and blood spilt at the altar to the Hearthkeeper: papers inside revealed that the Freemen had not merely been using the shrine as a hiding place, but that they had sought old Elvhen “power,” questing for a weapon to aid them in their “ _fight for Freedom_.” Thanduwen could not help but wonder: if the Dales had ever contained such secret power, would not it have been used by the Emerald Knights of ages past to defend their homeland? If they had been unable to repel the forces of the Exalted March, what made the Freemen think they could understand and use such a power to take that land back?

( _From where did they summon such audacity? Were all shemlen so shameless?_ )

They killed the Gamordan Stormrider in the Crow Fens. They walked the ritual paths in a shrine they found there, buried deep underground: statues shifting like puzzle pieces locking into place when the right devotions were invoked. None of it feels remarkable. Just a way to fill the time. To endure.

( _To wait, for just a while longer, before submitting to the inevitable…_ )

But by the nineteenth of Wintermarch—after three weeks spent in the Dirth (far longer than they had intended to linger, Dirthavaren always meant to be no more than a brief stop on the long road West) and seventeen days without their apostate—Thanduwen had run out of excuses to stay. Creators, she had spent the day prior scouring the plains for letters of fallen Orlesian soldiers (for whom she held no special love) so that they might find their way to families now bereft.

It was clear to everyone, then, that their tasks had concluded—excuses to remain, now exhausted. If the Inquisitor spent her days running errands and filing requisitions—tasks that could just as easily have been handled by lesser ranking members of the Inquisition—there was little reason left to keep her in Dirthavaren.

On the nineteenth of Wintermarch, as the sun fell below the mountains across the great Enavuris River (the murmuring of which had soothed her into nights of fitful slumber) and as Thanduwen returned at last to the forward camp, Scout Harding told her what she already knew:

“Inquisitor, the month is already half-spent.” Duty-bound to speak, that did not mean she was comfortable doing so; Harding shifted her weight between her feet, clasped and unclasped her hands uneasily, for she knew (as well as anyone) why the Inquisitor yet lingered. "If my records are correct, you're supposed to meet Hawke in the Approach on the first of Guardian. Even with the wind at your back, you’ll need ten days to make it in time. Maybe nine, if you’re lucky.”

The whole camp turned their eyes to their Inquisitor: Blackwell, Cole with his lantern eyes, Harding, even the requisitions officer holding his breath in suspense. All looking at Thanduwen with mingled anticipation and pity, all knowing, in some way, how this decision weighed upon her—the growing affection between her and Solas was plain, and it was no secret (unspoken though it may have been) that this was the reason she was biding her time in the Dirth. 

Thanduwen swallowed, turned her eyes northwest. Harding was right—they could not afford any further delay. By some accounts they had already tarried too long. She considered the darkening horizon ( _purpling like a bruise_ ) before she turned to back to Harding, and when she did she had fixed her face into something hard. She had rearranged her features into the most imposing, commanding look she could manage: trying her utmost to look decisive, a leader beyond questioning ( _everything she was not_ ) her shoulders thrust back and broad. 

"Keeper Hawen has invited us to one last meal with Clan Lindiran before we depart from Dirthavaren," she said. "Tomorrow, I will return to their camp with Blackwell and Cole. We will spend the night camped beside the Dalish again; we will leave at first light on the following day."

 

But the time she had bought was ill-bargained for: throughout the next day, there was no word nor sign of Solas. Thanduwen could not say whether this made her feel more foolish or broken, or whether she felt both in equal measure. She could not help but feel (as irrational as it might have been) as though this had been a test of her leadership; if it was, there was no doubt in her mind she had failed dismally. After all, what was one apostate when weighed against the fate of the entire Grey Wardens Order? From where did she summon the selfishness to keep the Inquisition here in the Dirth when they were so urgently required in the West?

For all that, there was comfort yet to be found in the hospitality of Clan Lindiran, who welcomed her once more for an evening of food and drink, and dance. In consideration of the work the Inquisition had done to help the Clan, Keeper Hawen could no longer reasonably deny Loranil’s request to join. This gathering, then, was in many ways more boisterous and celebratory than the first, as the Clan honored and said farewell to their son.

For Thanduwen, the gathering was bittersweet, marred not only by Solas’ absence but by the inescapable fact that, just like Lornail, she too would part from this Clan. Though they were not her own, their presence in the Dirth—their _resilience_ —had given her new reservoirs of strength to draw upon. For a time, in their company, she had felt like herself.

At least no one remarked openly on Solas’ absence. She suspected Keeper Hawen had asked it not be mentioned. Instead, the hunters entreated her to tell the tale of how they had slain the Stormrider in the Fens. They led her to the slender white beam tree beneath which they had buried Valorin, so that she might pay her respects. They sang songs and made toasts to Loranil.

Loranil was beaming with pride—Thanduwen remembered what that felt like. The excitement that bubbled within him, effervescent, was the same she had felt when Keeper Deshanna had sent her to the Conclave: the opportunity to prove oneself. To _become_. 

Thanduwen tried to be happy for him. She buried a silent and fervent hope that his own journey would end better than hers—she invoked Mythal to protect him. 

( _All-Mother,_ _let him be spared. Shelter him from what I have endured: the aggressive and ignorant inquiries of Andrastians, the new constellations of scars, the love that does not return. The way the world seems to darken the wider it grows._ )

She had been with the Inquisition for almost seven months, but she was closer to her breaking point now than she had ever been. It was not simply that she was deprived of Solas—she had gone long stretches before without being in his company. Rather it was that, as time wore on, it became increasingly difficult to believe he was going to come back. It was an impossible hope, to believe that her beloved nomad would materialize in the next few hours, when none had seen nor heard of him for nigh three weeks.

The party quieted as night deepened: as soon as the company thinned (as soon as it was acceptable for her to do so) Thanduwen retreated to the smaller fire Blackwall had kindled between the two Inquisition tents. She sat before it and stared without seeing into the embers. She felt neither cold nor warm, neither satisfied from the meal nor hungry. She felt simply numb: so impotent and heartsore in the face of her own defeat that the only way to soothe was to step outside of herself. 

It was there that Cole found her. 

“ _The feeling, cold but pleasant when he looks at me,_ sees _me, clearer than anyone else._ ”

But whatever it was that Cole did, what he was capable of—easing hurt, lessening burdens—Thanduwen did not feel it. Perhaps this was one more way in which the anchor made her exceptional. Perhaps she was holding her hurt too tightly (for hurt might be all she was left with to remember him by come morning, and she would not relinquish it yet.) The sole fruition of Cole’s efforts was that it gave a voice to a hurt she would prefer remain mute, all of her girlish faith and secret doubts come to light.

_“Only that one time—won’t call it the last time, not yet. Because in some actions their are truths. The cool taste of a river’s mouth.”_

Did it hurt worse to hear it? His voice like tugging the first thread that unspools a sweater: if he went on like this, she would unravel. But she did not have the heart to tell Cole to stop, knowing that he was trying to help in the best way that he knew how. No doubt within her he saw a suffering that he, in some part, shared, for though the nature of their relationship had been different Cole, too, had been close with Solas. And perhaps that helped, in itself: to have someone ( _at last!_ ) acknowledge her pain. Her grief. For days the others had walked on eggshells around her, watching the silent, pitched crescendo of her despair, but unwilling to name it. At least Cole’s words were proof that her pain was seen by someone. That it was real.

“ _He would have told me, if he was not coming back. He wouldn’t have just left._ ”

Then, "Excuse me, da’len, but might you allow me a moment alone with the Inquisitor?"

Thanduwen and Cole turned in tandem. Keeper Hawen stood behind them, looking at Cole with kindness, but no small amount of insistence. Cole merely blinked at him in response, before turning to Thanduwen. He knew she was in the throes of a pain that was both stubborn and immovable—he would not abandon her in that state unless she asked.

“It’s okay, Cole," she reassured him. “We can talk tomorrow.”

Cole turned back to Hawen. "If I am to go, may I go sit with the halla again?"

Hawen’s smile widened. ”Of course, da’len.”

Cole glanced once more at Thanduwen before he wandered towards the small cave where the halla were sheltered. "He is a strange child, that orphan of yours," Keeper Hawen said, watching Cole go as he joined Thanduwen on the ground. "But he has a way with animals. The herd rarely take to _tor’vhen,_ never mind humans. Though I suppose they’ve rarely had the chance.”

Thanduwen’s eyes followed Cole: Hawen was more right than he knew, but for the sake of Cole’s safety, she did not let on. “He is not like the other humans,” was all she said. Then, warmly, “I’ve grown very fond of him.”

The skin around Hawen's eyes wrinkled like sunbursts as he turned to Thanduwen, studying her. “He is not the only one you’ve grown fond of, I suspect,” he said, and watched for the reaction on her face. She wondered if her despair was so obvious. Had it left her haggard, sunken her cheeks or darkened the sockets of her eyes? Hawen continued, “Two _tor’vhen_ have joined us tonight, but there were three who accompanied you on your previous visit. Where has your unmarked friend gone?"

And really, she had suspected this was why Hawen had come. To check on her. But she felt woefully unprepared to face him. All the explanations for his absence welling up in her throat—and some distant part of her was repulsed that still, even now, after eighteen days, she sought to make excuses for him, defending his decision to leave her here in this forsaken place. She detested that impulse. She wished she could take refuge in bitterness and cynicism. She wished she could hate him for leaving but even still even _now_ on the eve of their exodus she could not bring herself to condemn him and how she _missed_ him, like an ache—

The vision of the dancing flames before her blurred—something wet slid down her cheek, and she felt her jaw begin to tremble. And the worst part was that it was not even for _him_. It was her despair at being robbed of her last comfort, and the fear at what that would to do her, in the end. To be the only strange and wild thing among the “civil,” a heretic they’d called Herald. Without him, she did not know how long she would stay as she had been, clinging to that old life, _this_ life, surrounded by her Clan—a family to which (she knew now, with dread and anguish) she would probably never return.

"Oh, dalen," Hawn crooned, and wrapped his arms around her, scooping her into his embrace. His callused hand came to the back of her head and pressed her face to his Keeper’s robes so she could sob into them, cries muffled by their privacy and their warmth. But the gesture, meant no doubt to comfort (to give her the dignity of indulging her sorrow without drawing attention) only made Thanduwen cry harder. It had been so long—such a terribly long and lonely time—since she had been held so tight and secure, touched with affection unbridled by reservation. No hesitant romance or crisis of faith between them, just love, unconditional.

Still, she did not allow herself to weep for long. She was too disciplined for that; already she felt a sense of self-loathing for having given in at all, though it had felt good to do so. Tonight, perhaps, she would allow herself to cry herself to exhaustion for the catharsis she knew it would bring, the swell of each sob sucked deeply into her lungs, easing the anxiety that had fluttered in her breast like a caged bird for days. But not now. Not in front of the others. 

But after her sobbing quieted and her breathing evened, Hawen held her, knowing with the intuition of a father that was what she needed: to be held. A comfort that Cole could not give her. Hawen sighed, ran his hand along the length of her forearm. “You would not remember this; you were very young at the time. But when you were a child, long before your magic revealed itself, your father, Eliel, always knew you would become a mage because of the strength of your connection to the Fade. He was so _proud_ , but he was also terrified for you. For what it would mean for you.”

Thanduwen turned her face up to look at him. “Keeper Deshanna has never said anything like that to me before. What do you mean? How did he know?”

“You’ve seen it at Clan Lavellan, da’len.” Hawen chuckled, added, “as First, you’ve probably helped. Teaching the children about where they go when they sleep: how to safely walk the paths, how to avoid the temptations and the dangers they may face. The Chantry rules with fear and takes advantage of the ignorance they create, but the Dalish have long known that most children are strong enough to resist the dangers of the Beyond on their own, if they are taught how. But you…” he laughed again; she felt his fingers comb through her hair. “You were _stubborn_.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“Probably because of how swiftly they put a stop to it,” Hawen said, raising an eyebrow. “And with good reason. You would dream very vividly, as a child. At first your father thought you were simply imaginative, telling tales, stringing together stories like the ones your mother would use to sing you to sleep. But gradually the truth of what you said became undeniable.” 

“You were spending your nights wandering the Beyond, heedless of Eliel’s warnings, undaunted by (or perhaps ignorant of) the peril you were in.You were willful in your insistence: you continue to assert, despite the tales your father would tell you to frighten you into caution, that you were in no danger.” 

Hawen sighed. “That year, Clan Elnor—your mother’s Clan—had lost a child to possession in the winter; he was eleven. You were only nine. Your father was on his wits end, terrified for you. At the Arlathven, your father consulted with every mage present about what he could do to protect you. It was Keeper Islanil—now the High Keeper—who remembered the dream weed: virelena, the shemlen call it, but the Dalish know it as _felan’din’eral_. He told your father to burn it nightly in the aravel, and it would keep you out of the Beyond, a moat you could not cross. Do you remember that? The years in which you didn’t dream?”

An uncertain smile played about her lips. Thanduwen did not meet Hawen’s gaze, only stared into the fire. “I remember… the smell of it,” she said, laughed. “That our aravel always smelled differently from everyone else’s, a kind of wet and loamy smell. It meant home. It never smelt the same after my parents died… I thought I’d made that up.”

Hawen turned to her, took the hand that bore the Anchor gently in his. “This mark you bear; the feats you accomplish with it. Would I be correct, to guess it has only strengthened this connection?”

Thanduwen looked away from him. “Keeper Hawen, you needn't worry for me.”

Hawen chuckled. “I am worried for every son and daughter of the Dales, my dear, but you, perhaps least of all. You have proven more than capable of handling yourself this past half moon. And though I call you _da’len_ , it is for fondness, and not in truth. You are a grown woman, come fully into your strength, and courage. Eliel would be _most_ proud of you.” 

Hawen reached out to her, took her chin gently in his hands and tilted it upwards to better inspect her face in the firelight. Perhaps he saw some hidden trace of her father’s features there, though it was unlikely; both she and her brother had favored the looks of their mother. The memory of her father, Eliel, expanded in the space between them, a warm ghost. Thanduwen was thankful for Hawen’s kind words, though she was not certain she believed them. What pride her father may have felt at the path she had carved for herself would no doubt have been eclipsed by fear of the danger that lay before her, just as he had feared for her as a child, stumbling about in the Fade.

Hawen dropped his hand from her face. “I have told you of your childhood and asked about the mark for this reason: when we first met—when you introduced me to Solas—you said he was a Dreamer, perhaps one of the most powerful in recent memory,” and he shrugged, lightly. Smiled. “I only meant to suggest that, if you have had little luck finding him in the Dirth, perhaps you might seek him in the Beyond.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” The words out of her mouth before she really had the time to consider them. (An uncertainty in her voice she would hardly dare allow in the presence of the Inquisition, of those whom she reluctantly led.)

Hawen hummed, a warm sound, and turned to contemplate the fire. “We rarely know what feats we are capable of, until need drives us to the attempt. But you are right—I am no Dreamer. Just a meddling _hahren,_ intervening where I needn’t.” He leaned down just enough to place a hand on her shoulder, give it a reassuring squeeze. “Good night, da’len. Nuva Falon’Din ma ghilan’eth min’nydha.”

 

Thanduwen watched Hawen recede into the darkness beyond the ring of the fire, proud and straight. He was so… composed. So dignified. And yet his belief in her ability to navigate the paths of the Fade unguided seemed deeply misplaced, even if it was touching.

But it would be disrespectful if she did not act on his advice—if she did not _try._

And perhaps she would not find Solas. Perhaps she would spend the night wandering between unfamiliar groves and caves, searching aimlessly, directionless. But what Hawen had offered her, whether the suggestion proved fruitful or not, was agency: the ability to act upon her longing, to endeavor to remedy her fear. She had wasted weeks waiting— no longer.

When she rose from the ground the gesture was swift; decisive. Determined.

Thanduwen crossed the encampment to Inquisition’s tents and crept inside, crossing to the corner where they’d stashed Solas’ things. They were still in the Inquisition’s possession: the morning they had failed to save Wisdom, Solas has stormed off without his pack. 

It did not take her long to find what she sought. In the satchel in which he kept his herbs, she easily identified the small, blue flowers he had given her on the evening they had kissed in the Fade. _Burn them at your bedside and wait for me. I will find you. Era’vun,_ he’d called it, though the shem’len named it rosebay, a wildflower to which they paid little attention. Yet the smudge of its dried blossoms strengthened one’s grip on the Fade, or temporarily thinned the Veil—she was not sure—and allowed a more lucid dreaming. In their excursions since she had not used them, for Solas had told her that with the anchor her connection was sufficiently strong. But tonight she welcomed whatever assistance she could get to carve a deeper path into the dreaming. 

Thanduwen let the flowers smolder and soon her tent was clouded with their scent, a cloying sort of coal-like smell. She lay supine on her bedroll, spine aligned with the earth. Even before she closed her eyelids she felt the world thinning around her, as if it were dissolving away—she tried to fill herself with one bright thought, like a pearl of intent held gently between her hands, fingers curled softly at her sides, palms upwards:

 _Lead me to him_. A dark softness enfolding her, enticing her to slumber, but still she held on to that brightness: _Lead me back to him._

 

Dusky: when she opened her eyes again, there was no tent, no stars, no burning blue flowers. She found herself adrift, cloistered in a dense mist. 

Never before had she found the Fade to be so formless, iridescent and clouded like a half-realized thought. Perhaps it was not the Fade itself, but the way she had entered it? She might yet be in a place in-between, one foot still planted in the world of Waking. Like fog rolling back into the arms of the Amaranthine Sea with the first warmth of daylight, the perhaps, as her sleep deepened, the mist would clear.

Impenetrable wall of fog-grey whirling….

Thanduwen did not know how long she waited—time in the Fade always so _slippery_ , and too far removed from her body to count time’s passing by her own rhythms. But whatever the length lingering, nothing changed: the Fade remained grey and nebulous.

Where might she find herself, if she wandered into that silvered sea? What paths were her feet already set upon, even if they were hidden from her? She dreamt in the Dirth, after all. There was no telling what horrors the Fade might hold for her in such a storied, blood-soaked place.

But though her course was less clear, her resolve had not lessened; slowly, she stood. 

The Fade lurched, flurried: vapors swirled, curled in eddies in the space around her the way milk unfurled in a cup of tea. But the movement disclosed nothing new beyond that gloom, merely that it could be frothed. A wave of her arm confirmed that this agitation was no coincidence. Whatever that haze was, it responded to her touch.

A wiggle of her fingers rippled the air around her, like stones dropped into a river.

She remembered Hawen’s words: “ _But you… you were stubborn_.” Steeled herself. If the Fade wished to be obstinate, she would match it; _indomitable_ , he’d called her once, and she would be just that until she found her way forward or the morning drew her out of the dreaming.

Cole’s words, her thoughts: _Only that one time—won’t call it the last time, not yet. Because in some actions their are truths._ Thanduwen closed her eyes, turned about, feeling. Tried to widen her perception the way she had in Crestwood when she’d found—been led to?—that artifact on the shore. She trained the pace of her breathing; she imagined her awareness as a window: in her mind, she thrust back forest green shutters, felt the warmth of the sun on her face. _Breathed._  

_I am here._

_And where are you?_

There was nothing to suggest the direction she chose was best, no tingling nor humming, not like on Calenhad’s shore. But still that decision did not feel entirely arbitrary, even if it was guided solely by a feeling in her gut. A wordless thing, as indistinct as the miasma that enveloped her. An impression she chose to trust. 

She put one foot in front of the other. 

Close and vast at once, that fathomless space. A perplexed waltz of particles of what? Pressing in around her, excited at each movement. In that blankness, that nothing, she projected, summoned memories to the surface of her mind: the way his hand fit into hers; the length of his thumbs; the sureness of his grasp. Sinking, and seeking….

Immeasurable tracts of time before a form was born from the gloom, before she saw the willow tree ahead of her. Each of its slender leaves golden, autumn-blushed. And as she approached it, the tree grew: tessellated; abstracted; divided. It was not one tree, but a great grove of weeping willows, each of its leaves dancing in a hush: a murmuring curtain, a thousand flickering veils. 

Barely audible above the sound of the leaves, she heard voices. 

Thanduwen parted the golden shrouds, caught shifting glimpses between the branches as they were stirred by some cool, fragrant wind. Ahead, she saw a crimson gleaming between the leaves like the scales of fish and over the murmur of the willows, bright and clear as day, the voice of the spirit: she knew it by the way it resounded, echoed as Command’s had in Crestwood. 

“ _There is another._ ”

Movement ahead, beyond the trees: the red column of energy coiling itself into something erect and imposing, and there, beside him, _ohhh_ —she sucked in a breath and it fluttered within her like the wind through the willow leaves—and yes, _yes_ , there he was, Solas, _she had found him_ , perched cross legged in front of the spirit. He was sitting atop a particularly broad knot in the willow’s roots, and his back was turned to her, but at the spirit’s words his head spun in her direction, and she was so delighted to see him ( _magnificent, the sight of him after so long without_ ) that she was not in the least bit dismayed at the perfectly cross look on his face.

“What are you doing here?” his voice, biting. 

Solas sat beneath the willow’s crown; its branches stretched far enough away from its trunk to create a small clearing. Thanduwen stepped into the grove, crossed the threshold into the shelter of its arms. “What else would I be doing here?” she asked, and she wanted to be playful, _lilting_ , but her voice was oversaturated with relief. “I came looking for you.”

Solas’ expression melted from irritation to confusion, then softened just as quickly as began to understand. “You… searched for me, and you found me?” He asked, uncertain, as if he couldn't quite believe she'd was capable of it. She did not hold it against him—earlier that evening, neither had she. 

“You were not doing a very good job of concealing yourself, Pride,” the spirit said, a deep rumbling in his voice that Thanduwen understood as a chuckle. 

Solas flashed the spirit with a disapproving glare, but they were unaffected by his scorn; if anything, if Thanduwen could judge by the way the light within them light flickered, they were only further amused.

“I did not wish to intrude,” Thanduwen continued, approaching Solas’ perch on the willow roots. “But we have to leave Dirthavaren tomorrow morning—I did not want to leave you behind."

Solas frowned, an eyebrow raised. “Were you unwilling to wait for my return?"

“It's the twentieth evening of Wintermarch,” Thanduwen said, and in light of his grief, she tried to keep her voice gentle, not incredulous; she half-succeeded, her tone somewhere between the two. “We waited as long as we could.”

Solas’ eyes narrowed in suspicion, but suspicion yielded to doubt. “It isn’t,” he asserted, but he did not sound convinced. He turned to the spirit. “It cannot be.”

“You have tarried overlong here, Pride,” the spirit said. “The Child of the Dales is correct.”

At once Solas was overcome with a look of such embarrassment and shame it was almost child-like. He was always freer with his emotions here—unrestrained—he reached for her, caught one of her hands between his own. “Ar ame ir abelas," he grieved. He had never looked so contrite, eyes searching sideways for an explanation; Thanduwen could not remember the last time he been so inarticulate. "I did not mean to leave you alone for so long—I did not know, lost track of the passing time, I—”

But Thanduwen was in no mood for displays of self-flagellation; she was far too buoyed with the joy of seeing him, the knowledge—at last—that he was safe. She squeezed his hand, nodded her head in the direction of the spirit behind him. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

Solas fixed his gaze on her, lips just parted, interrupted—and the troubled furrow between his eyes smoothed, and his brows lifted, softly. The corners of his mouth quirked, but the happiness he felt was yet less powerful than his awe; he was stricken. But after a spell he shook the feeling off and turned to the spirit beside them. He found his tongue. “Thanduwen, this is Vigilance,” he said, gesturing towards the spirit. “Vigilance, this is Thanduwen Lavellan, daughter of Soufei of Clan Elnor, First of Clan Lavellan and leader of the Inquisition.” The way he looked at her as he said it: moon-eyed. Soft. 

Vigilance made a sound of dismissal, nearly a sniff. “That much was fairly obvious by her manner and her aptitude, Pride. Few could find you here if you wished to go unfound, even as you are.” Vigilance floated closer to her, to better inspect her, but she was undaunted by their scrutiny. They spoke, “Pride is not the only one to sing your praises, Child of the Dales. Command has also spoken of you with great esteem. I see the praise was not undeserved, Thanduwen, daughter of Soufei.”

Even as Vigilance spoke, Solas had not turned his gaze from her, enrapture; his smile widened as the spirit spoke to her with such glowing approval. “Vigilance has been helping me scour the Fade for traces of Wisdom.”

“Have you found any?” she asked. 

His smile waned. “No, not yet. It would seem they have truly departed. There are stirrings of energy in the places of the Fade they loved; someday, something new might grow there. But it would not remember me, and it would not be the friend I knew.”

So it was true, then; Wisdom was gone. Thanduwen’s eyes pulled together, the corners of her mouth downturned. “Are you alright?”

“It hurts,” Solas said, simply. “It always does. But I will survive.”

“I am sorry, Solas,” Thanduwen said, her voice lowered. With her free hand she reached out stroke his cheek—and did she imagine it, or did he lean into that touch, press his face to the warmth of her open palm? She swallowed. Released his face before she could contemplate it longer, before her touch lingered, lengthened into something more intimate than she had intended. Softly, she asked him, “Do you want me to go?”

“Please don’t,” Vigilance drawled. “Your presence heralds a welcome reprieve; he is less dour now than he has been in weeks.”

Solas cast a sidelong glance Vigilance in half-hearted chastisement (for after all, there was truth in what the spirit said) before he turned back to Thanduwen. He ran his fingertips over the back of the hand he still held. “Stay. I would like it—it would please me greatly—if you would stay.”

How could she refuse? But she cast her eyes to the ground, uncertain all the same, before she turned her eyes back to him. “If I do, will you have enough time to return to our encampment before dawn?”

Solas beamed. 

“ _Dirtha’vhen’an._ I will be there when you wake.”

 

They passed the night in the golden willow-grove; they sat side-by-side on the knotted roots, their bodies flush. Thanduwen welcomed Vigilance’s questions. In return, he recounted for her in marvelous detail the little miracles he’d seen in his corner of the Fade.

Not long past first light she stirred, roused by the first hint daybreak and the fine sounds of morning stirrings in the Dalish camp. The voices were faint, but by their cadence, she could tell she was listening to Clan Lindiran say its final farewells to Loranil. For awhile, she lingered beneath the coverings of her bedroll, eyes closed, recalling her memories of the prior evening. But soon she found the bedroll too warm; beneath it, she was sweating. That was unusual. It was the dead of winter: her tent was never this warm.

When she cracked open her eyes, it became immediately apparent why: 

Stretched beside her, nothing to cushion the ground beneath him and not so much as a blanket to cover him, was Solas. He was sprawled on his stomach as though he had simply collapsed there, dressed as fully as he had been the day he left, as though no time had passed at all. 

Thanduwen did not have names for the variety and depth of emotion that swelled within her at the sight. Her throat felt tight; she hardly dared breathe. In the glow of morning diffused through the fabric of the tent, his skin looked so soft; she could count each of his pores and the hairs of his lashes as his spine rose and fell with each breath. She was overcome by the urge—inappropriate though she knew it to be—to reach out and touch him, to brush the back of her hand against the planes of his face. For he looked so beautiful like this: unburdened, peaceful.

All of this saturated by the fact that _he had come home to her_ —

She swallowed, leashed the hungry thing within her that called out for him. For whatever reason he had come to her, she refused to take advantage. Slowly, silently as she could, she rose, knelt; gently and quietly as she was able, she cast her blanket (still warm with the heat of her body) over his sleeping form, and crept to the front of the tent.

But before she could pull back the flaps at the tent’s entrance: “Thanduwen.”

She turned at the sound of her name, consonants still thick with slumber. Solas had turned onto his back and was pulling himself up onto his elbows, half sitting; he fought a wince, the ache of having slept the wrong way on a hardened, cold ground. Then he looked at her: repentant, though not as deeply as he had been in the Fade.

“Thanduwen,” he repeated her name, softer. “Last night as I returned… I did not want to disturb Cole. I was not yet ready to face him, unprepared to endure his questions and his concern. I apologize, if I overstepped by coming here instead.”

“You didn’t,” she said, just as softly. “I am… glad, that you felt comfortable enough to come here.” She shrugged her shoulders, smiled. “Mostly, I am glad you returned.”

“I did. And I am sorry, again, for the lateness of my return.” Solas turned his eyes to the ground,  “I am in your debt, _lethallin_. We were able to give Wisdom a measure of peace before they perished. Not many would have risked their safety to do that.” He turned his eyes back to her. “It has been… a long time, since I could trust someone the way I have come to trust you.”

Suddenly her throat felt thick—it was very hard in that moment not to cross the space between them and kiss him. She clenched her fist at her side, bridled herself; smiled. “Take a moment if you need it. I would understand if you wish to prepare yourself before you face the others. But we must not delay—I promised Harding we would leave just after dawn.” She turned to exit the tent, paused… turned her head to peer at Solas over her shoulder.

“I am pleased to have earned your trust, _lethallin._ But you must know: you have had mine since the beginning.”

 

An hour past dawn, on the twenty-first day of Wintermarch and in the deepest cold of southwinter, they left Dirthavaren. 

Their had originally planned to leave the Exalted Plains and strike along the less frequented country roads. They would have traveled north until they reached the Imperial Highway, which would lead them West to Velun, the last settlement before the Orlesian badlands. But they had lingered in the Dales too long. It was fortunate that Blackwall was with them, for he knew the secret paths that wound across the Deauvin Flats, a stretch of grassland now browned and brittle with winter’s chill. If they struck a course due west, they would eventually reach the southern bend of the Highway.

Each morning, they awoke to find frost bowing the tall blades of grass. Most days it snowed. At night, they went without the warmth of a fire; with such sparse woodlands, there wasn’t enough wood to keep a fire fueled. What wood they could find was often too wet to hold a flame. 

It took them five days of riding before they reached the southernmost stretch of the Imperial Highway, less than a day’s ride from the shores of Lake Celestine. The northern shores of the lake—the Heartlands of Orlais—were known for their temperate climate, the land curved with rolling, fertile hills, banded with the trellises of vineyards. But here, south of the lake, the wind rolled off the shore and howled through the prairie like a spirit of vengeance. 

After half a day on the Imperial Highway, they reached Val Firmin. They were still traveling at an unrelenting pace—many miles still separated them from the Approach—and so they could not stay the night within the safety and warmth of the settlement. However, they were able to purchase firewood; all in their party were cheered at the possibility of a warm fire around which they could eat and sleep that evening.

They travelled ’til gloaming bruised the sky, then stopped just north of the Highway, out of sight of the road. They made camp in a ditch, what might once have been a riverbed, a tributary that led to the lake, now dry. The warmth of the fire lifted their spirits considerably. Even the harts seemed in better fettle—thankful, perhaps, for the shelter the steep walls of their little ditch afforded them from the wind. 

As Thanduwen and Solas had set about pitching tents and starting a fire, Blackwall had foraged for their dinner. They had been able to purchase some preserved foodstuffs in Velun, but it was unlikely they would meet another merchant before they reached the Approach, and so Blackwall had struck off on his own, looking for what nutrition was to be found in the dead of winter. He returned not long after laden with a surprisingly diverse selection: knobby roots, a few hardy mushrooms, rosehips he had dug out of the frost. The luxury of a warm meal after six days without left each of them blissfully sated; not long after, Blackwall disappeared into his tent with several fire-warmed rocks, eager to take advantage of the most comfortable night they’d had yet by getting a good night’s rest.

Cole had long past wandered off on his own; he hadn’t touched his dinner, though this was not much cause for concern in and of itself, as no one—including Cole himself—was certain whether or not he even needed to eat. He had been increasingly agitated since they had left Dirthavaren, and though Thanduwen asked him about it, he would not—or could not—say why. The most she could discern was that he had made a similar journey before, and retracing his steps was disquieting him. 

And so, not long past sunset, Solas and Thanduwen found themselves alone, nestled in their winter cloaks.

It was the first opportunity they’d had to spent time together since they had left Dirthavaren—since the morning Thanduwen had awoke to find Solas asleep beside her. The journey west had been harsh and unpleasant, and words did not carry well over the whipping of the wind. At night, when the temperature plummeted, it had been too cold and unpleasant to stay outside the warmth of their tents for long, even for each other’s company. They were sitting on a log, soft with rot, making idle conversation when it happened. 

Perhaps Solas was telling her of his recent visits to the Fade—the new corners of the Beyond the flatlands had revealed to him—or perhaps they were discussing Blackwall’s impressive resourcefulness, or the relief of leaving the Dirth behind, or, or… she did not remember, and it did not matter. What she says in response is not intended to be particularly witty, or clever—but Solas must think it so. He had _laughed,_ that tolling, genuine laugh he gave when his own mirth caught him by surprise. Not a chuckle of derision or sultry intent, but genuine delight. Something solar-flares in her chest. In all that she had accomplished in her time as Inquisitor, nothing made her feel quite so pleased with herself as when she was able to pull that sound out of him. 

As his body shook from the tremors of that laugh, he had reached out—he had placed his hand, ever so lightly and delicately, on her knee.  

And when his laughter had died down, the two of them had observed that gesture in an awkward, intimate silence. As if they had not spent each day since they met gravitating towards one another. Both unwilling to name the gesture for what it was: both reluctant to dismiss it, but neither brave enough to encourage it.

“Thanduwen…” he began, but then he sighed and turned his eyes away from her. She felt his fingertips slide across her knee as he withdrew his hand. “Forgive me; that was impulsive.”

She was just as impulsive: she caught his hand in hers before it could make its full retreat. Her throat felt dry, hoarse from cinder after so long without the warmth of a fire (without the warmth of his company.) “There is nothing to forgive,” she insisted. “I often wish you were more impulsive, or that I could better respond to those impulses, but I…”

But her voice faltered: Solas was no longer looking away, but had turned his gaze to their clasped hands. He regarded them with a look that she could only describe as a detached sort of loathing; his brows were knitted, and his upper lip twitched uneasily. Thanduwen was reminded, again, of the imbalance between them: the impossible tight rope walk of being near him, where she welcomed every incidental touch and caress but always feared to return it. Because he had not yet made up his mind. Because he had asked for space, time: a request she had tried her best to respect.

She couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —continue on like this. Not when winter was close and cold around them and the comfort of another’s warmth was too tempting to resist.

Thanduwen sighed, commenced a retreat of her own. She wrapped the furs of her cloak tighter around her body; reluctantly, she released his hand. “Solas, I don’t know where the boundaries are; they seem to always be shifting. Lines drawn in sand only to be swept away by the next tide. I don’t want to overstep,” she said. Then she swallowed; resumed, reluctantly, “When Wisdom…” but she could not say it, _died_ , his grief still too fresh, “…and I wanted to reach out to you, wanted to hold you so badly, then. To let you know you were not alone. But you had asked for time to make up your mind. And you will have it, as much of it as you want. But in the meantime, this… touching knees, holding hands, joining me in my tent when I have no idea where you stand…” and the effort it took, to summon the last words, true and necessary even if she disdained them, “it isn’t fair.”

She was holding her breath; he was breathing deep. An inhale and exhale that heaved his shoulders and chest, and when he looked at her it was with a look of surrender. “You’re right,” he spoke, quietly, but even as he acknowledged her request for his restraint, he reached out and touched her, incapable of preventing his hands from brushing the color on her cheeks, the way she blushed at the cold. “It isn’t.” And though she had just asked for that space—a boundary, something clearly delineated so she knew how to act, how not to _take advantage_ —she could not help but lean her face into the warmth of his palm, feel the roughness of his callused fingers against her cheek.

At her welcome (her permission, granted) Solas drew closer; his thumb smoothed over the crest of her cheek. When he spoke, he whispered, the space between them close enough for his voice to carry: close enough for Thanduwen to feel the heat of the breath that carried the words. “I have not forgotten the taste of your mouth,” he said, and the words sent an unbidden shiver down her spine. “The memory of holding you that night… it has been inescapable. And yet I wonder, I….” Something flickered across his face: that same tortured indecision, unnamable and inexplicable to her. “Were you always like this?”

She couldn’t help the way that abrupt turn of tone amused her; the corners of her lips upturned in tandem with a wrinkle of her nose. “Like what?” she asked the space between them. “Devoted to you?”

But her words seemed more to wound him than comfort him. “No, not that,” he said. “Before the anchor, before we met, were you always…” and though her words may have hurt him—though she could not say why—they did not stop him from bringing his other hand to her opposite cheek, to holding her face gently between his palms, “…so wise? So kind?”

Thanduwen raised a hand of her own, placed it gently atop his. “Do you wish me to tell you that you've changed my self and my life for the better?” she asked, quietly. She leaned forward, closer, until their foreheads met; he did not retreat. She closed her eyes. “You have, Solas. You did.”

“You cannot know that,” he said, and his expression twisted into something pained; she could not see it, but she knew it by the way the skin of his brow pulled where it met hers. She heard it in his voice.

Thanduwen opened her eyes to look at him. As close as they were, she could barely make out his expression, but she could tell his eyes were closed, fighting something, unnamed. When she spoke again, the romance was out of her voice: she spoke of truths, leveled and without emotion. “I was raised to be this way: strong, wise. The question is not what I have become, but what the Inquisition might have made me, if I had nothing to ground me.” And here they were, talking of boundaries, of limits of intimacy, but still she could not stop from reaching out with her left hand, placing it gently on his cheek, reciprocating his touch. The anchor cast a ghastly green glow over his features. “You... keep me this way. It is _your_ strength and wisdom that allows me to remain true to my own. You inspire me to be compassionate, just, graceful.”

“You give me far too much credit.” Whispered so quietly it was barely audible over the crackling of the fire.

She could not help but smile at that. It was not that his modesty amused her in and of itself, but rather that by now she recognized this pattern between them: their modesty mirrored. That tendency—a gift or a curse, she knew not—to underestimate their accomplishments and influence over each other. “Perhaps that is to compensate for the credit you so richly deserve, though it is rarely given,” she said, quietly. “You have been as instrumental to the Inquisition’s success as I, though you prefer your contributions to remain unacknowledged.”

At that, he pulled away; she did not follow him, fingertips left behind to hover in the air, bereft of their perch. Solas hunched over, curled inward on himself—a rare display of poor posture—his elbows perched on his knees, his hands laced together. They were clasped tightly, as though he were physically restraining himself from reaching out to her again. He swallowed. The amber firelight followed the rise and fall of his throat. 

“When they brought you to me…” he began, “you could have been anyone. You were a mystery. And though I believed you innocent—blameless for the destruction of the Temple—still I knew not what to expect. Would you assist us in closing the Breach willingly? Would you be capable of providing such assistance? And then you…” a smile twitched, before molding itself into a troubled frown, “… exceeded all possible expectations, proved to be beyond what any of us could have hoped you would be.” 

He looked at her, matter-of-factly. “That is why they wish to believe you are chosen. Because they cannot believe the depth of your virtue, your integrity, your… incorruptibility. They cannot explain it; therefore, it must be an expression of Divinity. The will of their _Maker_.” He sneered the word, voicing the disdain she often felt but rarely voiced. Then his voice softened.  “But I see it. And though I know it is no act of God, that makes it no less remarkable. You possess a subtlety and a wisdom I have not seen since my deepest journeys into ancient memories of the Fade.” 

“And when you tell me I inspire you…” and Solas looked very much like he wanted to touch her again, then; he clasped his hands tighter, turned his gaze back to the fire. “It frightens me. Even before we grew close you were a far better person than I have ever been. You are more than I ever could have dreamt you might be….” He turned his head away from her, pushed her from her peripheral vision. Softly, barely audible, “More dear to me than I fear is wise.” 

Wise or not, she could not help but be warmed by Solas’ confession that she was _dear_ to him. She smiled. Hummed thoughtfully. “That's probably the nicest thing you've ever said to me, though I'm not sure it's true.” He turned towards her; already he looked prepared to protest. “Oh, I am sure you _believe_ it is. But…”  and her voice trailed off. She shrugged her shoulders, turned her face up to the moon through the bare branches, just as fat as it had been the night they had walked across the silvery Dirth.  

“But who _cares_?” she asked, her tone easy, carefree. “What you are, what I am: kind or cruel, wise or foolish. I know this is true: when I am with you, my spirit is _free_. Not buckled under the weight of the Inquisition, or—”

— _warm,_ and close, the moon eclipsed: his mouth closed around hers and her thought left unfinished. He had bridged the space between them in the span of a heartbeat. His hand lifted, lighted on the side of her neck, thumb nestled in the notch behind her jaw to turn her face, softly, towards his. And she surrendered: yielded to the ardor of his kiss as surely as the sea yields to the pull of the heavens.

( _Endeavoring to put words to the emotions, to describe fully what he meant to her, she had not seen: she had not seen the way his gaze had followed her, hardly moving, hardly_ breathing _. She did not see the subtle wrinkle between his brows, the sole indication of his despair as he began to understand: it was too late for restraint. Aghast at his own imminent surrender, and what it meant—what was to come, and what must inevitably follow, how terribly this would end—torn just as his face was halved between firelight and shadows as he watched her speak of what she did not—_ could not _—know._

_He shouldn’t—but this was merely the most recent in a long line of things he should not have done. He never should have danced with her. He should not have returned her kiss. He should have better controlled himself, been cold and unmovable as stone...._

_He never should have come to love her._

_Perhaps the most prideful folly since waking from all those long years of slumber was to think he could protect himself from this._

_With her face upturned to the silver light of the moon, she did not see the fleeting twitch at the corner of his jaw: the flicker that heralded the defeat of his discipline. The last remaining walls he had built to defend himself against this catastrophe crumbled as though they were castles of sand, swept out to sea._

_With her face upturned to the moon, she did not see the way his face softened, lunged—the way he closed the space between them when she spoke of how he had freed her._ )

And as she sealed her lips around his in return she could hear the way he breathed: the shaking exhale that avalanched through him at her consent. Solas pressed closer; she could feel the tip of his nose against her cheek as the kiss deepened. The hand at her neck gently guided her towards him; the hand beneath her winter cloak (when it had slipped into her cloak she could not say) was upon her waist, teasing upwards the hem of her shirt, seeking the radiant warmth of bare flesh. She moved closer. His hand slipped under the shirt and found purchase at the small of her back. 

And still, _still—_ even with his tongue daring to trace along her bottom lip, begging permission (despite the shudder that ran through her at that lick)—she felt within her the responsibility to resist. To be certain this was what he wanted, and that she, with her influence and position (her _titles_ ) was not taking advantage; the last thing she wanted was to make him feel used. 

But his kiss stirred something within her, as ephemeral and formless as the miasma of the Fade that had unsettled in her wake as she crossed that haunted space, searching for him. And perhaps it was all those months of waiting, or the gentleness of his touch, as if he couldn’t quite believe he could (or had given himself permission to) hold her like this. Again. A longing she had denied for too long: she let it swallow her.

She brought her hand to the back of his neck, cradled. Opened her mouth and closed her teeth gently along his bottom lip, tugged; they came together like a rolling ocean wave and his tongue crossed the threshold of her mouth to taste her, and at once she felt all tension and resistance go out of her. A ship tossed in a storm, or the way a river surges and sings along its path to meet the sea; the way it froths on approach, pooling and pouring. She grasped at his strong shoulders, and when she followed his tongue with her own, his mouth hummed against hers—resonance of pleasure—his hand wandering down her waist to grip at her thigh.

Diminished, receding (as before the next tidal swell): he pulled away from her, breathing heavily (she could feel the rise and fall of his shoulders with each breath) but glistening in the light of the fire like a strand of the finest silk, she saw the line of saliva that still bridged the space between them. Mouth cornering into a smile as she raised a hand to his face, swiped the offending link away with her thumb so she could better look at him. She could count each crease of his swollen lips deepened in the flickering firelight. Each freckle.

The hand he had kept at her jaw to cradle her face ventured a descent, fingertips tracing along the exposed flesh of her neck, across her collar, downward, hesitant at the swell of her breast: she breathed in, an exaggerated motion ( _how a river swells with the rain that dapples its surface_ ) ribs pushing outward as lungs filled with air made sweeter by his proximity, and pushed her into his open palm. He squeezed; she wished the weather warmer, the climate more agreeable, for the leather of her vest barely yielded to the touch but she groaned into the feeling of it all the same, leaning into him. 

The effect on him was tremendous: he quavered, a hungry and stippled sound riding on his exhale as his hand circled her breast once more. Then he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers raised, his lips as if he meant to kiss her—thought better of it. Lowered his hand from her breast to her lower back, his opposite hand from her thigh to the hollow behind her knee, and pulled; not gentle, but demanding. A command for closer contact.

She obeyed, thrilled at the order, stifled a laugh (did not want to wake the others) [ _to the side in the periphery of her vision a log collapsed into itself; a flurry of cinders ascended on a pillar of smoke, giddy as she felt_ ] and allowed herself to be hoisted, guided, her legs straddling his until she was settled in his lap. As he pressed his face against her neck, planting ardent kisses along the column of her throat, she lifted her face to the stars and the bare branches above, smiled at the hottest of the wild sparks that lifted from their fire and disappeared into the sky above. 

And then, she could have been anywhere, anyone. Everything of consequence—her burdens, her responsibilities—fallen away to make room for this, this heat pooling in her gut ( _reciprocated, at last_ ) and this flickering, the fluttering of her heart each time his mouth pressed against her flesh, sowing a blush in its wake, a warmth to guard against the cold of winter. And when his lips found their way back to hers she met them: closed the seam of her mouth around his bottom lip in a languid kiss as her fingertips lifted to his face, traced along the side of his cheek.

When they broke apart again she bowed her head to him, kept their foreheads pressed. As she stroked the lines of his face, she could not help but laugh. Tamed her mirth, or tried. Smile still playing about her lips when she asked him: “Solas, are you _sure_?”

She could not see his face—with her back to the fire he was obscured in deep shadow—but she could feel him: feel the hand that rose to comb through her hair, feel the kiss he pressed to the corner of her mouth, and when he pulled away it was only to leave enough space to speak. With each word his lips brushed against hers. “I have thought on this long enough.” 

“ _Ar lath ma vhenan._ I am yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT LET’S GET THIS SHIP SAILING
> 
> Translations:  
> Ar ame ir abelas | (formal) I am very sorry.  
> felan’din’eral | Literally, “plant of no dreaming.”  
> Tuelanhn ama na sule melan’an. | Creators guide you until we meet again.  
> Nuva Falon’Din ma ghilan’eth min’nydha | May Falon’Din guide you safely tonight.  
> Dirtha’vhen’an. | A promise, a vow. 
> 
> Translations by Project Elvhen/fenxshiral. Some phrases cobbled together (probably with shaky grammar) by myself from their lexicon.


	17. Precipice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speaking through grins. “Was it worth it?” His eyes narrow with a smile that crinkles their corners. “I had hoped to reward your patience.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: NSFW (and very little plot to speak of, so if that’s not your bag regular plot will resume next update in a big way.)

At daybreak in the violet Approach, she confesses: “I’ve never seen a desert before.”

Sitting at the edge of Harding’s camp, still wrapped in the blankets they had slept in, Solas and Thanduwen shared in the warmth of each other’s bodies against the morning’s cold. The pink light of dawn that cuts west across the barren landscape swallows the stars. To the north the canyon is laid out before them, framed by two tall red buttes, striped with purple. Everything feels ancient and eternal. The twisted, dry wood of the trees gives Thanduwen the impression that they will outlive her by an age. 

It was Wintersend—the first of Guardian—and across the continent, in small villages and clustered cities, the humans would be celebrating the commencement of the thaw, and the promise of Spring. In the Approach it was yet bitterly cold, but Thanduwen was thankful to be there. They had travelled at a relentless pace to make up for the time they had spent lingering in Dirthavaren. Today was the day they were due to meet Hawke and Alistair; they had arrived just in time the night before, two hours past sunset. Thanduwen had barely enough energy to lay out her bedroll before she collapsed into a heap with Solas and drifted off to sleep.

They had shared a tent since that night in the Deauvin Flats when Solas had kissed her; said, _I am yours._ And so—like that, by declaration—he was. But beyond their shared sleeping space, out of consideration for the companions with which they travelled, they were discreet. Kisses stolen throughout the day were only seized when they were (reasonably) certain no one was watching; if they made love, they did so in the seclusion of the Fade. But still she wanted him to lie with her, though such proximity was not a prerequisite to their intimacy. It was warmer with him beside her; once they had entered the badlands the snow had feathered to a stop, but it was no less cold without it. 

The greater truth was she kept him near for the comfort of his company. What lay ahead was somehow less dreadful when she woke to face it with him at her side.

That morning they had woken well-rested and entangled, but they spent little time lingering in their shared warmth, as they had been inclined to on previous mornings. ( _Blinking into waking with one another, sleepy smiles and the particular color of the morning light as it filtered through the cloth of the tent and touched his face.…_ ) They had arrived last night in the dark; Thanduwen was eager to see the land revealed in the light of day. The shape of the desert. Its colors.

 _This place_ , she thought, looking out at the barren Approach, _is unforgiving of weakness; this place shapes strength the way the wind carves the rocks_. A good place to incubate their love, that it might weather—that it might endure.

There was just enough light to see. The sun lit the sky, but it had not yet crested the horizon. When it did, the wind would wake with it; according to Harding, by mid-morning, they would not be able to make out the sun at all. A dim disk beyond the grit. Sand and smog excited by the heat, kicked up and scattering, migrating across the desert in an obfuscating, omnipresent cloud. This, then, was the clearest view of the desert they would have all day.

And it is beautiful, she thinks, despite its desolation. Though she knows the others fear it. Blight-ravaged, the Approach is an unforgiving land of extremes. Always the threat of an ambush of darkspawn. Of dehydration. Sand creeping into every crevice, stinging flesh on the rapid winds that carry it. But there is a starkness to it that she can’t help but be struck by, wordless with awe before it; even as she is, huddled against the cold dawn.

“I’ve never seen a desert before. Everything is so clear, and thin,” and though she does not say it, Solas can hear the admiration in her voice. That note of wonder. It is another sight she never dreamt she would see in her lifetime, expectations set from that time before the Inquisition, when she had imagined for herself a life spent on her home roads. Cooled beneath the shade of trees of such number and growth that now those roads felt like wealth. Abundance. 

The Approach is a dangerous place—she knows that. If they did not have the Inquisition to support them, if they ran out of water, if they lost their way… if, if. And today is the day they are due to meet Hawke—and Thanduwen does not believe for a minute that whatever they find will make the place feel any safer. 

But for this moment at dawn, she feels lucky to behold it, beside someone she has come to love.

That she has found that—love—in the middle of all of this (the suffocating pressure, the space between the Chantry and the Inquisition like being held in the jaws of a vice) feels as miraculous as the life that goes on in this place. Resilient.

 

That night they send word back to Skyhold: _The Wardens are gathering at Adamant. Prepare the troops._

And the month after unfolds after with a strange kind of rhythm. She lives two lives, one for each kind of light. In the muted perpetual dusk of the day, the shock of green gives it away: what might once have been a well-manicured avenue before the Blight took the water. A grove of trees. What magic preserves them? Their branches sway in the dust winds, and between their trunks, Venatori—the first they’ve seen in the Approach. Slain before the doors of ruins too well-preserved, halls littered with Tevinter mages and Demons frozen mid-strike. _Perhaps_ , she thinks, _the Blight was the best thing that could have  happened to this place_.

At night—when the dusk clears, and the aurora dances in the sky—she falls into Solas’ arms, into their nightly dream. The wind ceases its howling. In the Fade, under his most expert touch, the sounds she makes rival the wind’s most piercing howls. 

The giddiness of new love: laughing in the face of danger. For to be in love is to be vulnerable. To expose oneself to a kind of danger, and trust it will be kept at bay. A thing that in turns she spites and does not wish to acknowledge. The first signs of mold behind a wall. A shadow that does not fall quite as it should. A sharp edge; it cuts.

And each day, the Inquisition’s army marches closer across Orlais. Their progress marked by the arrival of ravens. In Fiona’s hand: _We have crossed the Dales. We make for Lake Celestine._ She waits for their arrival; she dreads it. The sound of a thousand pairs of marching feet against cold, packed winterdirt. The imminence of more bloodspill.

They slay a band of poachers. Then a dragon. Noxious fumes are cleansed from sulfur pits and the desert begins to open up to them as a rare flower.

When the dust kicks up off the ground and speeds across the dunes, the sound it makes against itself is almost like rain.

The hoodoos frame each lavender dawn. The mesas lying parallel to the horizon like its lover. The impossible time it must have taken to lay down all those colors. _Come what may_ , she thinks, _this will stand. This will still be here._ It is a comfort, the long march of time that led to this moment—that brought her here, to this desert, to behold it—and there will be more time yet. Whether she succeeds or fails.

[ _She is wrong. But she does not yet know it._ ]

Everything feels ancient and eternal. Some kind of twisted permanence in the gnarled trees. She knows that nothing is infinite—not even love. But something untouchable about the shape of this land. It is possessed of some strength that makes it seem immutable.

The wind kicks the grains of sand into their faces—they must cover their mouths as they cross the badlands—but when it passes between the canyons and the gullies and the buttes, it sings along the paths it carved long ago. Patiently, diligently.

The dusty wasteland is cold and dry but for one river, heavy with sediment; at night, she thinks, when he sneaks his hand between her thighs, her body releases more moisture than is contained in one square mile of this blighted earth. She thinks, if they made love on the cold hard ground instead of the bedroll, they would irrigate this place with their passion, their sweat. Something one day might grow where they had lain. Something hardy and strong and defiant, as they have had to be. As she has grown to be.

Is that a danger, she wonders—the water of their bodies they waste without a care in pursuit of their pleasure?

But not coupled—not yet. He is holding back. She is waiting for him to be ready.

“It deserves a better setting,” he croons when she asks, and she can feel his body behind her, against her, his hands soft on her hips. The brume of the Fade dancing about them. “Better than something muffled and hasty, crowded in a tent beside the others. I want you alone, where you can declare your pleasure to the sky without the fear of being overheard.”

“And awake?” she asks, tilting her head, exposing her neck as his mouth wanders along it. Wanting him—her chest rising and falling in a dramatic sway with each touch of his lips to her flesh. “We have done everything else here. Why not this, too?”

“It should be special.” His breath against her ear, and the conviction in his words betray the depth of thought he has given to the matter. “I want you to be able to see the stars, and remember for years afterwards the pattern of them in the sky on the first night we moved as one.”

She turns in his arms to face him, and there is that look again—the one she can never describe, or place, _pained—_ but then he smiles. Reaches up to run a hand through her hair. 

“That you would share yourself with me… it is a gift. It deserves to be treated as such.”

The Abyssal Rift cracks the space between north and south. A gaping maw. Camped at it’s edge, she falls asleep to the intermittent sound of rock falls. Echoes through the chasm. Widening, by inches, with each day; swallowing the land into the Void.

The stria on the buttes: black to blue to purple. Red and pink layers of sediment. A bruised land. How much time could be measured in those colors? And how the plants here give the appearance of depending on nothing but themselves. Such hardy and independent things.

They must cover their mouths with wrappings to keep the dust out of their lungs. All this means to her is that when they reach camp in the evening and Solas removes the mask from his jaw, the taste of him is all the sweeter, the shape of his mouth free from hiding. That his lips are chapped and dry makes them no less beautiful.

The wind sings. When it quiets at night, they take up the song in its stead. Humming pleasure songs.

Why does it all feel suddenly so dangerous? She does not fear that he will hurt her. Nor does she feel, really, that she will wound him. She has loved before. More importantly, she has lost love before. She knows what it is like. She knows there is no “forever.” Still, in the sun, in the dim half-shadow: a doubt which stalks her. What hides in the dust?

She is living two lives. She prefers the one she lives under the stars, lit up among the wavering lights of the aurora. They are alone and they are safe and they are in love, and she has no room for fear nor doubt, no matter how prudent such caution might be.

And the way the dunes migrate! The way the sand can wear away flesh to the bone, the way it can devour things whole. Ruins, carcasses, treasures, swallowed in a golden shroud.

She did not think it would be so colorful here. Perhaps it appears that way to her because she is in love. The delight of green along the gully, the jeweled spray of water at the foot of the waterfall. The stripes of violet and cobalt along the buttes.

And as the Blight swept through this land and left it barren, so too does the Inquisition storm Griffin Wing Keep and scour its corners until every last Venatori lies dead, and silent. A place to welcome her army on their march to Adamant, walls of stone against the dust. The last stop before the assault, impending…inevitable.

The gurns and phoenixes hunt during the day because it is warmer; Harding says that if they had come to the Approach in summer they’d be active at night, sneaking upon their camps under shelter of darkness. It is easier to defend against what you can see. A hard-scaled beast stalking toward the camp is easier to counter than the threat that grows inside your heart, unseen to your eyes, which you prefer not to acknowledge—nor name.

The way that little brushlings of green cling to the sheer cliff faces, seizing small purchase. How many of them, she wonders, topple beneath their own weight? Grown too heavy for the feeble grasp they have on those rocks, only to fall. Perhaps none. Perhaps, in time, all.

And each day her army marches closer. The iridescent gleam of raven-wings against an obscured, dusty sky. In Cullen’s hand, _Tomorrow we march until we can see the shores of Lake Celestine in the distance._

“It deserves something better.” That sounds like an excuse. His real reasons are as hidden to her as the sun behind the dust, but it is no matter. She will wait.

At night, when the wind dies and the dust clears, the sky lights up in green and purple and blue. Strange flickering lights. The gleaming of the stars silhouette the mesas in a shimmering net. 

Coracavus. Echoback Fort. Midway through the month they travel to the Oasis where the Elvhen Temple stands, locked. Venatori slain—blood stains on the foreboding pronaos. Keys to open some doors, but not all. She fears what lies behind them: not their curses, but their secrets. 

( _Why does the Temple share his name? Why, in all his wanderings, has he never heard of it? That look, that place,_ pained _. An edge that cuts._ )

One night they wander from camp into the shelter of the Oasis—the giant, slain ( _always they are leaving dead things in their wake_ )—and step into its waters, cool their ankles. It is warm, heated from beneath the surface. An impossible spring. It is the first time she puts her mouth on him outside of the Fade. There, he grunts and groans but here—wary of being over heard by the others camped nearby—he shudders when he comes, his breath a trembling hiss, and she can feel the muscles of his thighs quivering against her shoulders, and here he tastes nothing like he does in that other place. 

She does not miss the convulsive twitches of his abdomen as he watches her lick his spend from his groin. ( _A water too precious to waste._ )

The ground is cracked and dry but at night when his lips press against her flesh his breath is moist, a humid puff against her breast, her neck.

To acknowledge the doubt (the insistence of danger) is to admit she had made a mistake, but she is too strung with pleasure (swollen with sounds) to call this a mistake, not yet.

She is living two lives. At night, in the Fade, it seems anything is possible: that the world might be as pliant as he is, that it begs for her touch the same way he does. That it _wants_ to be changed. She fights the urge to start making a list of the way he sounds when he comes. There is plenty of time, she assuages herself. Her daylight-self (Sunburst-self) is not so sure.

She tells herself she is afraid of what he would do for her. The lengths to which he would go to protect her—there is a battle on the horizon, the army marching closer, a preponderance of ravens—the worlds he would burn. She remembers how he only hesitated before slaying those mages in the Dirth because she was there to stop him. She will not always be there to stop him. But the truth is that is a lie she is telling herself in order to protect herself from the truth: what she fears is what she would do, give up, relinquish for him. 

But she will not be ruled by her fear. 

There are tales of a Dalish Clan that lives out in this desert, though she has seen no sign of them, and no one has heard of them in an age. Still, she thinks they would laugh at the things she considers to be her troubles. _Danger._ She is fed. She does not know thirst—not real thirst. Is there more to ask?

And the army marches forward. But on the night before it is due to arrive at Griffin Wing Keep Solas finds her walking the ramparts, steals her—

“Come. With me. _”_   He says, his arms around her waist, pulling her against him, his mouth to her ear. “Come away with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“We are escaping.”

 

The last light of the sun casts its blush over the wasteland. The path before them is clouded gold with the settling dust, the dying of the day-winds. As they cross the barren flat, their gait is one heartbeat away from a dance. One moment they are walking side by side; in the next, he has collected her into his arms. He sows another row of kisses along her cheek. 

Laughter. “Where are you taking me?” She asks him again and again. Each time his answer changes. Each time punctuated with a fresh bouquet of kisses.

“A retreat.”

“An oasis.”

“A shelter where neither your responsibilities nor your men will find you.”

She believes him. When they arrive it is at a tent pitched much too close to the Abyssal Rift, but he has turned it into much more than that with his words. A sanctuary. A harbor. A hoard of furs cushions the hard ground, a fire roars at the entrance. The smoke smells sweeter than it should; he has loaded the logs with fragrance. By some miracle, beside the furs, there sits not only a jug of water but a small of bowl of fruit.

She turns to him with a smile. “So close to the Rift?”

“You think us incapable of fighting off a few darkspawn?” He smiles—a challenge—before turning his eyes back to Griffon Wing Keep. “Your men know to watch this position. If we send up a flare, they will come. I set wards. Left fresh kills for the varghests.” Considers. “But if you feel unsafe, we can return…?”

But the danger is worth braving, and soon to be eclipsed by the danger of the siege. Confirmed by raven: tomorrow, the Inquisition will arrive and there will be no escaping her duty. Blood spilt with a wave of her hand. In these last hours before that time, as her Commanders approach, there is no place else she’d rather be than here, alone, with him. She says it: “There is no place else I would rather be.”

The grin he gives her is _wolfish_. “Good,” he says, crosses the space between them. Places his hands gently on her hips. Leans close to her ear. Presses a kiss to a pulse point on her neck, feels the way her heartbeat flutters at such contact. She can feel the warmth of the fire on her body. Can feel his hands tugging at her clothes.

But not yet—as she has waited, he will wait—she wants to hear it. She pulls away from him, denying him her warmth to look into his face. Asks, quietly, “Why have you brought me here?”

She can hear his smile in the depth and rumble of his voice. His eyes narrow. “You know why.”

The corners of her mouth lift in delight. That tone—so _accusatory._ “Yes.” She can feel one of the last winds of the day tickle the hair on her head, the back of her neck. “I want to hear you say it.”

For a moment, Solas only looks at her, measuring her anticipation. But he will not deny her what she has asked for. He leans in, brushes his lips against her ear with each word: “Ar my rajal na amahn ahnsul isalan pala na.”

A gasp, and at once, through her body, a stiffening; a heat in the cradle of her hips. Solas does not miss it, the shuddering intake of breath. She knows how to respond—they have practiced this many times. She knows the words to use and where to put the stress and how the cadence of the sentence will fall. And she knows, from experience—from those lurid tutoring sessions in the Fade—what it will do to him to hear her say such salacious things in that ancient tongue. 

But she doesn't. Not yet. 

She brings her hands up to his shoulders, smooths along the hem of his cloak to the fastener. The sound of it unbuckling is such a small sound, the metal pieces clicking against one another as they release. The soft crushed hush of the cloak meeting the floor. 

Then he takes her hands, presses his lips to the inside of each of her wrists. Murmurs against the veins, ”I want to give you a pleasure as deep as that Abyss."

"They say it stretches into the very Void."

He kisses each of her knuckles, his expression thoughtful. "Does that frighten you?"

"No." There are not many things that frighten her, now. She had never thought herself particularly fearful, but these past few months have so freed her from her fear she does not know if she has become brave or foolish. She no longer fears the Venatori, the Templars—not even really Corypheus. Mostly she fears losing the people she loves, the ones she is trying to protect. Solas. Her Clan. She does not want to be left alone. 

Yet—and this _does_ frighten her—she thinks she could survive even that, though she does not know what it would lead her to become. 

She reaches for him, brushes the back of her fingers over his cheek. Both of their bodies have been ravaged by this dry cold. His skin is dry, but still there is a pleasure in feeling the planes of his face; he closes his eyes and leans into her touch. 

When he opens his eyes he fixes them of the clasp of her cloak, but as he unfastens it he does not let it fall, catches it around his arm. The ground is covered in fine golden dust, its roaming at a rest for the night. He presses a kiss to her cheek before picking up both cloaks, shaking them clean, turning into the tent to stow them away somewhere they won't be soiled. 

She follows. As he's turned she brings her hands to his hips, follows the curve of his waist until her fingers are tracing the rut of his thighs. She raises herself on her toes to press a kiss to the back of his head, just below the base of his skull. 

In her arms he revolves. Swallows. She watches his throat rise and fall with the motion. 

They are both on the edge of something. She cannot fathom why this moment feels so monumental. ( _Why does his selection of this particular site, on the edge of the Abyss, feel so appropriate?_ ) She has seen his body, touched it countless times. She is becoming familiar with it the ways she knows each twist and turn of her Clan’s home roads. It is not the first time for either of them, neither in love, nor in intimacy. She has no reason to believe it will be the last for either. 

( _That sense of danger that has pursued her across the desert has followed her even here, into the nest Solas has lovingly built for their love making. She feels this precipice that she cannot name. She refuses to admit it—it would shame her to admit that this formless sense of danger excites her terribly._

 _She is thinking about it when he leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth, asking permission. She captures his mouth with hers. She is already wet._ )

There is more moisture to be found in his mouth than the whole of this wasteland. The kiss tastes sweeter for it. They spend so many of the days here thirsty. Even with the varghests cleared of the gully, water is scarce, and precious.

The wind here has carved the dunes and the rocks. She wants to feel his hands on her body, like that. And she knows what will give it to her:

“ _Solas,_ ” his name a dreamy sigh. Repeated, “ _Solas,_ ” throatier. Her fingertips trace down the front of his chest, over his stomach; she slips two fingers beneath the band of his breeches, hooks them, jerks his waist closer for emphasis when she says—articulated as he taught her:

“ _Nuvenan ma’palas elvar’el, junuan mah’vir._ ”

The effect upon him is instant: he stills. One tremor runs the length of his body and then abruptly stops. Then, a singular moment of quiet and stillness—even the wind quieted now—the crackling of the wood in the fire—she notes the smell of rose incense wafting from the hearth, sweetness—and then he is upon her.

Undressing is sloppy and hurried. It is early winter, and at night the temperatures dip below freezing. But there must be some enchantment that he has cast upon the place, because when he pulls her last linen shirt over her head—the swell of bare flesh exposed to the night, curve of freckled shoulders, her chest pushing against her breastband—she only feels the warmth of the fire. 

She can taste blood: in their frantic kissing, someone’s lip has split. She cannot tell if its his or hers. No one is stopping to check. She drops her hands from his shoulders to his waist, fingers worrying at the knot that keeps his breeches tied as she slowly drops to her knees.

But his command comes next, indisputable. “No.”

His hand is on her shoulder. She looks up at him—it is the first time their kissing has ceased since it began. She can see the blossom of bright red on his bottom lip—oh, it must be his, then, that has cracked—and the look on his eyes stills her hands over his waist. _No._

Then, “Lie down.”

He has prepared this place with such care and attention to detail, she supposes that he has earned some obedience. For now, she is inclined to give it. Wordlessly watching him, she kicks her legs out from beneath her, stretches her body over the soft bed of blankets and furs he has laid down for them. He follows her descent, kneels between her legs and sets to work untying the laces of her boots. Gently, he works her left boot off of her foot. Peels her sock free. After it has been discarded, he raises her leg to his mouth; he presses a kiss to the bone of her inner ankle. A starburst of bright red marks her where his mouth has met her skin.

“You’re bleeding,” she says. 

“Tel abelas,” comes the unhurried dismissal, as he works the other boot, the other sock off her foot. Presses a kiss to her ankle. Mirrored red blossoms on her feet. 

“Garas,” she says, beckoning him. She sits upright. She picks the jug of water up from beside the bed. 

He eyes it mistrustfully. “You’ll be in greater need of it after.” It is a warning as much as a promise, to fuck her and exhaust her to the point of great thirst. 

But, “Drink,” she implores, raising the ceramic jug to his mouth. He lights his lips on the edge of the jug. She tilts, careful not to spill; he takes one sip, then another. She watches with an indecent sort of hunger at the muscles of his neck loosening and contracting with each swallow. 

She sets the jug beside them, far enough so that there is little risk of one of them accidentally upsetting it what will come. Solas wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

And before he can deny her a second time, her hands find the strings of his breeches and begin to untie. He _laughs._ She only flashes him a look from behind her eyelashes, her face downturned to focus on the task at hand. When the band is sufficiently loose—when she can lower it over his hips—a small sound of surprise escapes her. Where she had expected to find the soft, forgiving fabric of smalls there is only skin—the shock of hair—and his arousal, freed.

The smile he gives her is positively wicked. Then he raises himself, stands to his full height so she can better see him, and works the breeches down past the curve of his ass, along his legs. She bites her lip. Appreciates the look of him, like this, pale skin kissed rosy by the firelight. The poetry in the way the strength of his thighs yields to his calves. The shape that strength takes in him. The solid width of his ankles.

But she is only given a moment to admire him; in the next, he is beside her. On top of her. Straddling her thighs and bringing his hands to her own waistband, untying it with a more practiced deftness. In no time at all his fingers have slipped below the band; she presses her feet into the ground and lifts her hips so he can maneuver the breeches down her legs. He sighs to behold her. Gently, more tentatively—watching her face for any sign of resistance—he dips his fingers into the waistband of her smalls. Works them, slowly, over her hips and down her thighs. Presses his face against her lower abdomen. _inhales._ Taking in the scent of her, his head dipping lower—

“No.”

He lifts his head, looks up at her. Curious, and amused—perhaps, slightly irritated. “No?”

She smiles at him. “No.”  Raises herself so she sits. Presses a hand onto his shoulder, and guides him onto his back. Casts a leg over his body and holds herself—perched—her heat just inches away from the head of his arousal. He places his hands on top of her thighs. His grip tightens when she hooks her fingers into her breastband, pulls it over her head in one easy motion. She lets him look at her for a moment longer, then, slowly, presses backwards—the muscles in her shoulders tightening delightfully at the feeling of him against her folds, about to—

“Wait.”

She turns her head, tilts it to the side. From whence comes this hesitance? He has prepared a place for them to love one another, a nest. She will not ask anything of him that he will not give freely. But she _wants_ him. How deliciously the head of him had slid along the length of her, slick and wet and _ready—_

“I want to taste you first.”

And his hands are firm on her waist. In an abrupt and urgent motion he wrenches her body forward; she allows it. With the strength of his arms he practically lifts her, drags her until her knees come to rest on either side of his head and then he guides her hips, lowers her over his face. His mouth closes around her sex, his lips vibrating with a muffled moan.

A high, strangled sound escapes her. _Sweetness._ The first time, awake—and it is different, here. More solid. In the Fade she… _floats_ , clouds of pleasure, he carries her—sighs—but the ground is solid beneath her, her knees against the furs against the hard dirt. A silvery, hitched gasp accompanies each languid and undulating sweep of his tongue against her. Each lick exacting. Curling around—shallow breaths. Trying to unclench the grip of the pleasure around her lungs. Unable to withhold the nudge of her hips to his mouth when the tongue brushes _just so._ Her mouth, dry—his promise of _thirst_ —too many soft pleasure sounds making their escape. A tightness in her thighs. She is aware, suddenly, of her toes curling—the way her chin has begun to droop towards her chest—an observation nearly obliterated when he puckers his mouth around her and _sucks,_ but—

“Solas,” she struggles to force his name past her lips. “ _Solas._ I’m going to—”

Trying to warn him, but he does not let her finish—he answers her caution with an open-palmed smack to the flesh of her rear, another pulsing moan between her legs. _Do it._ He wants it—he knows she is holding herself back. So he guides her. The hands on her waist press her forward, guide her retreat. The sway and swell of her hips against his face. He wants her to ride him into her orgasm. 

She is more than willing to oblige.

She reaches her hand over her head to grasp at the hairs at the nape of her neck, something to hold steady to; her elbow points towards the heavens. Her free hand clutches at her own thigh. And she bites her lower lip, and she rolls her hips—slowly—against his face, brushing her sex along his tongue. A shudder. Her thighs tremble with the exertion of moving so very delicately, and he knows it—he is having none of it.

Another slap, to the opposite cheek—firmer. A reprimand.

She chokes on her own restraint. His tongue presses against the bud of her clitoris, his mouth puckers around it. Another moan of approval—of encouragement.

And it is too easy, then, to give him what he is asking for: the rocking of her hips against his lips is shallow—wound so tightly, so close to the end, she cannot manage much more than sharp movements—and she feels her spine curling inward, her head dipping lower as all the muscles in her abdomen pull tighter. Coiling. She grinds her seam against the open flat of his tongue and hums something desperate. 

Once more, he moans against her in appreciation—the way it _pulses_ through her—

She comes trembling with a whimper, a caged sort of sound, her hips jerking erratically against him before her movements slow and she begins to back away—but she is not granted such a retreat. His hands tighten on her ass; his mouth pursues her. And he pulls her yet tighter into a blinding pleasure, draws out the duration of her orgasm with insistent, deft slides of his tongue.

[He is telling her: _louder._ ]

She groans something obscene and resonant, cello-like. He is pulling sounds out of her like a bow drags across strings. And she is clutching her hair and beneath her other hand she can feel her thigh trembling, the arrhythmic pulsing of the muscles of her core, pulling her tighter, and tighter…digging into _light…._

Pulsing, shuddering, trembling… the flood of air into her lungs….

When she comes down a moment later—when the world, the tent and the furs and Solas beneath her and the fire smoke behind them all melt back into view from the pale blinding oblivion of orgasm—Solas is still licking along her and she is gasping for breath. She shudders along a lengthened exhale, releases her trembling legs, leans back so she can rest (just enough) on his chest. He gives one last lick along the length of her—a drunkard draining the bottle of every last sip—before he presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh, and eases his head back onto the furs. When she looks at him his lips are shining with wet and he looks terribly pleased with himself.

“That isn’t why you brought me here,” she says, breathy and light, but the attempt to admonish is weak.

He merely smiles at her. “The night is long, _vhen’an._ ” 

Night has fallen complete now, the desert swallowed up in darkness. The firelight bends around their bodies to illuminate. Thanduwen gathers enough strength to shift herself down along Solas’ body, to she straddles his waist. She can feel the press of him behind her, but she is still catching her breath. It can wait. He said, _the night is long._

But now he is looking at her strangely. That nameless _something_ he won’t share coloring the way he watches her. She doesn’t ask about it anymore. Every day brings new dangers, and when she wakes to the dawn she knows she may not see the next—she knows that. Under such circumstances the tawdry details of a past he is trying to outrun do not trouble her—they seem to matter little. They are all outrunning something. She loves him no less for it. 

Though she is always curious. Even in her patience and acceptance, she cannot help but be curious.

“The aurora has come out behind you,” he says, quietly. She turns just enough to look at it—still a sweet ache at the way her abdomen strains under the exertion of her recent climax—to see the sky lit up with dancing ribbons of color. Green and blue and purple, flickering among the stars. She turns back to him, but he is not looking at the aurora—he is looking at her. “You look…” he begins, loses his voice.

She smiles at him. She has an idea of what she looks like. Hair disheveled, flushed, sweating, trembling—probably still a trace of Solas’ bloodied lip smeared along her mouth—she must look a mess. “What?” she asks, goading him.

He considers her for a moment. Then, in his most serious and felt voice, “Queenly.”

She can’t help but laugh. 

“You find that amusing?” he asks.

“I don’t believe you.”

“But it is true. You do.”

Smiling, she leans forward over him—the light touch of her breasts against his chest—and presses a kiss to the column of his throat, the skin beneath his jaw. “Does that make you my King,” she asks, with another kiss, “or my consort?”

“I do not think you would endure a King, _vhen’an_.” It is a compliment, not an accusation. “You are too uncompromising in your convictions.”

She ducks out from beneath his jaw. “But you share my convictions,” she said, tilting her head to the side. If she is fighting for the betterment of the downtrodden, it is because he told her she could. That she could wield her influence with precision. That this did not all have to be about the Breach, but could be about what might come after, too. It was he who has helped her turn her burden from a curse to a weapon.

( _At night, it seems anything is possible: that the world might be as pliant as he is, that it begs for her touch the same way he does._ )

“Yes,” he said, quietly—and that thing again. That nameless thing. “Many of them.” It isn’t an answer. His attempts to conceal his hesitance to take up that mantle— _King_ —even in jest. 

No matter. “Consort, then,” she says, brushing her lips against his. “The Queen’s concubine. As good an explanation as any why you insist on giving pleasure before you take any of your own.” And that _is_ an accusation, even if a slight one. Still wounded he would not let her undress him.

“Has it occurred to you that perhaps I take _great_ pleasure in the giving?”

“Perhaps I want to give too,” she says, with a pout. “Perhaps I am a benevolent Queen.”

And before he can retort—she can see the witty quip on the tip of his tongue—she lifts her hips, presses his arousal between her legs until it lays trapped against his stomach, draped her yet-dripping folds. 

She bites her lip. To feel him at last so _close_ against her, and yet—not yet—restraint. She leans forward over him, braces a hand on his shoulder to pin him to the floor of the tent, the rolls her hips—slowly—dragging her clit against the head of his swollen arousal. 

She moans low and quavering; he barely makes a sound, but she catches the faint hiss of his breath. Can feel beneath her hand the way the muscles of his shoulder clench, unclench. 

Forward and back—and when the going slickens, she cannot say whether it is from her own fluids or his. Her breath is unsteady. She is riding out of afterglow and into renewed arousal, and as she rocks against him she can feel herself swelling again. It is hardly any stimulation at all—certainly less elegant and insistent than the press of his tongue—but she thinks she could come a second time just from this. The moment before, just-on-the-edge-of. What will come next. The night is long, and the wind has died. The sound of the fire, crackling. Heady with arousal and the smell of roses wafting from the fire, and Solas, bare beneath her.…

Solas—she casts a glance down at him. He looks tortured—she does not know if that is because of her touch or because he’s having second thoughts—but he gives her a nod of consent and when she rolls her hips against him once more the noise he makes—though stifled—is exquisite in its utter obscenity. 

And then—again—she is close. But she won’t. Too close, and she stops, rests, her hand clawed once more in her thigh, head dipped, breathing. 

His voice is breathy. “Why have you stopped?”

“I want…” she says… but suddenly so close to it she has become nervous. Anxious. They have touched each other so often she is learning the curves of his body like the roads of her home, the path the aravels float through the trees, but now she is unsure. Has he done this because of the siege that draws nearer? A pounding rhythm of war drums.

He reaches for her hand on his shoulder, presses her open palm to his face. She can feel the uneven breath he releases against it before he presses a kiss to her palm, mumbles the words, “Yes. Please.”

But he has been holding back. He has given reasons that she does not believe are the real reasons. He has built them a nest for this purpose. She does not want to do this if he has only consented because he thinks they might perish. She has waited for him to be ready—she can wait longer, yet.

She swallows, breathes deeply, tries her best to appear (despite her arousal) rational, patient. “Solas, are you _sure_?”

He lifts waist, her slightly. He can read her by now. Knows she is close. Bucks his own hips, slowly, dragging his cock against her clit in slow and deliberate motions that have her closing her eyes and gasping in delicate little breaths. Holding herself tightly. She doesn’t want to come again, not yet—

“Look at me.”

She opens her eyes.

“Ar eman sule’vi’in’el or’ra o bel’rahnaan.” He says these words and for a moment even the demanding voice of her lust is drowned out by the thing that brightens within her like a flare—how she _loves_ him. “And you, _vhenan_? Are you sure?”

She laughs and hopes it doesn’t sound too desperate. “Certain _._ ” Then she pulls her hand out of his watches him for a moment before she presses her fore and middle finger to his lips. “Suck,” she commands. 

Knuckle by knuckle, he devours the two fingers. Eyes opened and watching her all the while—performing. She can feel his tongue around them and remembers his tongue against her; responds to that touch with another rock of her hips against him. He groans, the walls of his mouth vibrate around her fingers. When she removes them a moment later, they are slick.

She lifts herself off of him, reaches between her legs and presses her fingers into her body, gasps a little at the touch. Lips just parted, breathing heavily, he watches her. Enraptured. Knuckles appearing then disappearing inside of her. She rides her own fingers, widening herself to accommodate him. It is not her first time—it is far from that. But his particular length and girth has not escaped her and for the first time they couple, at least, she thinks it best to prepare herself. And noticing how he looks at her—she loves that slack jawed hungry look—she moans lightly, moves her hips around her wrist as she searches—fingers brushing a hidden roughness within her, tight and _gasping_ —eyes closed—

The _warmth_ and texture of his tongue on her nipple—he has launched himself into a seated position and latched his mouth around her, and pinches at her other breast, and she cries something bright and soft. Pulls her fingers out, reaches to grab hold of his shoulder but she is stopped. He has seized her wrist. He guides her fingers back to his lips, closes his mouth around them, tonguing along each knuckle and fold for the taste of her. When he releases her fingers he wraps his hand gently around the back of her neck, guiding her head so it is pressed against his—their noses brush—she can feel his breath on her cheek—he nods.

With his free hand on her hip to guide her, slowly, she lowers herself. Pauses at the insistent press of him at her entrance. Wants to remember what this feels like. The soft and smothered sound—barely audible—that Solas makes. She wants to cherish it. To remember this moment just before. 

How this thing between them felt both fragile and grand at once—an impossible and beautiful contradiction.

But when she lowers herself farther—the pop of his head as she takes it into her—the _grunt_ he makes—she closes her eyes. To better feel. To not be clouded with the beautiful sight of him (there will be plenty to watch later) as she lowers herself onto him, inch by inch, until her ass meets the cradle of his hips. And when he is fully sheathed within her it feels so _good_ that for a moment she finds it difficult to do much else but hold him, there—she finds it difficult to breathe.

Another grunt, a hiss; she raises herself upward with what strength remains in her trembling thighs, already exerted; a pleased hum as she drops herself back onto him, the full dull press of him inside her. And rises. Falls back onto him faster than she plans or expects to when his hand finds her breast again and squeezes. She hurries to raise herself again, pauses at this height, empty— _breathes_ —

“Why are you holding yourself back?”

She’s panting against his neck, her expression screwed. “I’m close, I’m going to—and I don’t know if I can again after. And I want to _with_ you.”

His mouth finds hers and the kiss is hot and heavy. His tongue shameless, now; no longer seeking the taste of her like that first time in the Fade, like a thief in the night, trying to be _inconspicuous._ He braces himself with a hand planted in the furs behind him, and he thrusts his hips up to greet her, entering her in a swift and decisive motion that leaves her seeing stars. And he does not stop. Each thrust is deliberate and hard, and as the waves of pleasure rock her body—as some indescribable sound escapes her—she looks at him, eyes heavily lidded, with a look of the utmost betrayal.

It is not terribly convincing—a moment later, with just the right drag of him inside of her, she throws her head back and wails.

“Come for me,” he breathes against her neck. “I want to _feel_ it. It will not be the last time.”

“Solas, I’m not _sixteen_ anymore, I can’t— _hhah_ —“

He laughs. The sound rumbles through him, but does nothing to interrupt the steady thrust of him, the smacking sound of the bowl of his hips meeting her cheeks. Then he winds a hand in her hair and tugs—a stilted cry of pleasure from her at that roughness—until her ear is pressed to his mouth, and he whispers: “You are young enough. Or, I am skilled enough. Tonight, you will have what you desire and more.”

She is close. She can feel the way her legs coil. Bind her. “You- you said in your _youth_ you were cocky. I’m not sure— _hhngh_ —not sure you’ve entirely outgrown that.”

But she is close, and it is no secret—their first time coupled, but he has seen the signs of her orgasm many times before—and so when he stops the thrusting of his hips, pulls back to look at her with a poorly concealed grin, he knows where he holds her, how near she is to the precipice. “I will stop,” he murmurs, quietly, “if you insist.”

“No,” before she even has a chance to think about it, urgent, and pursing the feeling of him driving inside of her with her own body now, rocking against him. “Gods, no.”

He pulls her closer, buries his face against her neck, and she can swear she hears him murmur, “ _Good._ ”

And it is not long, then. He resumes the heaving of his hips, and she meets each thrust with her own, driving him deep. Swallows. And when he brings his hand back to her breast, traces the rough pad of his callused thumb in spirals along her nipple, she clings to him like she is one of those shrubs that grows miraculously out of the barren cliffside, roots clinging for life itself. She can no longer match his pace. The rhythm of her thrusting—irregular, erratic. He slows his own movements. Uneven wrenching of her hips, until she seizes his shoulders in a fierce grip and buries her head into his neck. 

Frantic, abrupt—the grinding of her pelvis against his, and then—

 _lightness,_ more vibrant than the first time, the cords of her neck straining with the incoherent sound that she releases and her body is nothing but _rush_ , nearly perfectly still but something formidable sweeping through her, a pleasure that she is nothing in the face of: only lightning. A brilliant flash. A matchstick burning out…

In the afterglow she is left still, slack against Solas, still buried in his shoulder, listening to the misfired signals of her body in the downfall: stray twitches along her thighs and the lips of her sex as her spirit returns to her body. As she recovers, Solas—still hard inside of her, still the drag of him against her—is remarkably patient. 

Slowly, gently, her wraps an arm around her back, just below her shoulders; he pulls out of her and guides her gently onto her back. And the _ground_ , it feels so good against her. Behind her? The world spinning a little less. She runs the back of her hand along the furs that surround her, hums pleasurably at the way the softness feels against her skin. She is still tremendously sensitive and the tingle of each hair of the furs against her skin is a revelation. 

She tilts her head back to peer out of the cover of the tent Solas has erected. Peers at the world, upside-down. The fire is burning, though less fiercely; the flames lick downwards towards the aurora which glimmers cyan among the constellations. 

She breathes deeply. Smells the incense, the woodsmoke, the stale smell of sweat and sex and the clear dry smell of desert night. Stretches against the furs that surround her, before she turns back to Solas.

And he is watching her—and touching himself.

Her breath catches in her throat. She realizes she must have been more or less wriggling around in the furs he’d laid—sex still glistening, breasts kissed by firelight, ribs straining as she tilted back her head—she had not meant to entice him. It doesn’t matter—the thought leaves her a moment later. There is only room within her for the awareness of one thing: this feeling, the heat of arousal pooling in her gut _yet again_ because of the way he is looking at her as he strokes slowly along his length, knees splayed so she can see his balls swaying with each sweep of his hand. The way his hips leaning into his own touch.

When she regains some control of herself—capable of some thought other than _awe_ of the magnificence of the sight in front of her—she wets her lips with a dart of her tongue (she does not miss the subtle widening of his eyes at the gesture) and widens her legs, drawing her feet closer to her body, bent at the knee, tilting up her entrance towards him. “You promised me a third, at _least._ ”

His mouth falls open, a soft ‘o’ of shock. “I did not want—are you ready?”

She smiles, nods; and in the next instant he is upon her. It is so quick she laughs in surprise. His hands find her hips and drag her across the furs back towards him, his arm winding behind the small of her back to lift her hips up from the floor. He kisses his way along her torso: her lowest rib, her sternum, her breast. When his mouth reaches her collar he tightens his grip on her and enters her again.

The feeling of it is _glorious._ She is not sure whether she can come again, but the feeling of him within her again is almost pleasure enough. She is not yet oversensitive, not raw. The heft of him filling her is welcome. She tilts her head back and hums.

This time, he is not slow. And below him, now, she can feel the smack of his balls against her with every thrust, and the bounce of her breasts—she draws her arms out and over her head, tangles her fingers together. A dark look at Solas, full of intent. With her arms stretched above her so, the roundness of her breasts, emphasized. For his pleasure. For him to watch.

She is, after all, a benevolent Queen. 

And the gesture does not go unnoticed. Answered with an appreciative groan. 

She wraps her legs around him lazily. His free hand (the one not holding her half-aloft) runs along her leg, up her chest—a rough pinch of her nipple has her shuddering and her back arching off the ground—before it reaches her neck, caresses along the underneath of her arm. Even that touch has her trembling.

He gasps—suddenly, at once, the pace of his hips slows. Pulls himself out of her, and his brow furrow.s 

She has just enough composure to lift an eyebrow. Croon. “Don’t stop on my account.”

He looks out at her beneath his heavy, drawn brow. The grim set of his mouth. “I made you a promise. It is not one I intend to break.”

“Solas,” she says, a chastisement in her voice. “The night is long, remember? I want to _feel_ you. Each throb and twitch as you spill—“

But in the next moment her words are swallowed up in a convulsive breath. His other hand has found its way to her waist; his thumb has parted the folds of her sex and sought out her clit and is circling it, rough and insistent, and her whole body snaps rigid at once. His touch, relentless. The grip of her legs around his waist tightens, draws herself closer to him. Roughly thumbing against her. A touch to bring her clenching around him all the tighter.

A heave of breath from him. Hips shift, he stirs; it is the lightest of moments but the press of him within her and the touch of his fingers wipe her mind blank. 

She loses her sense of time passing—how long does he touch her? Her arms are still above her head and her hands are fisting in the furs; her grip is pulling loose the hairs. A fountain of sounds wrest from her throat—parched, dry. Trembling, her arms, her legs are trembling—

“Vhen’an—”

“ _Ahh—hha!_ ” Dragged out of her as he moves his hand away and thrusts full into her once more, and she swears she can hear the cry echoing through the Rift as he hoists her hips closer, sinking full into her with each sharp drive of his hips against hers. Between unbroken crests of pleasure she forces her eyes open to look at him. Unmistakable, even in the dim firelight, she can see a flush against his high cheekbones. The cords of his neck pulled tight. 

He catches her looking at him—what she must look like herself—and against each panting breath, his lips lift in an unmistakable smile.

In the next moment— “ _Nnhn—!_ ” —there is only darkness, eyes squeezed shut against the roll of his hips _just_ so. Merely the idea that she might come yet a third time overwhelms her in a dizzy haze. Each time he fills her it becomes less an idea than a certainty. The drag of him inside of her. Taut, and tense, and near—and he is too, he must be. She knows by the sounds he makes. Each grunt and groan that pulls him closer, the moans that accent each time motion as he drives into her.

Woodsmoke, incense, trembling into tightness; she feels the way the aurora _looks_ , shimmering. Unsteady—with the grip of her legs around him she uses what feeble strength her legs still have to pull him into her, to meet each thrust. A tender ache that radiates from her pelvis. Nearly in the throes of—deliciously strained. 

She feels herself closening, and the insistence of her calves against his back is throwing off his rhythm. As telling as the sounds which she no longer holds back. Crying her pleasure to the night. A wail, an appeal: “Solas, _please_ —” 

When he speaks his voice has lost its usual rhythm, but not the affect it has on her. It is still like crushed velvet. Struggling to speak and maintain the persistent rhythm of their coupling, still, he command:

"Say it—as I taught you."

He has found her Elvhen wanting. Little naughtiness to be found in Deshanna’s old tomes, in the parables of the Arlathven Keepers. In the nights before this he has mouthed the words slowly for her. Had her repeat a them until she could replicate them precisely. Had her practice until his mouth was murmuring the words against her abdomen, her thighs. Buried his tongue in her and drank her as she repeated with greater and greater conviction. 

She knows what he is asking for has has been taught how to give it. She can hardly string together a coherent thought, never mind wrap her tongue around a language that was stolen from her people—that they have tried desperately to reclaim, a tapestry of patches. But she loves him, feels him, _burns_ —through the heavy onslaught of pleasure her mind searches desperately for the words he taught her cloistered in the Fade between bouts of their lovemaking:

“ _Ame— ame rosemah’da’din—_ ”

And then she is _unspooling._ Back arched off the furs and only her shoulders to ground her, head pressed against the ground, straining. A smaller pleasure. It burns through her and dims—but he cups his hands around that ember and breathes. Fitful snaps of hips and clenched at her climax she can _feel_ the way he throbs when he comes—from her, a wail—and from him, a light gasp of relief that gives way to a pitched, husky groan—throaty—spilling inside of her, pooling—and her own climax, extended, a conflagration. 

Thunderous. A swell that rocks her from her head to her toes. Pleasure past the point of reason or coherency….

 

He has buried his face in her neck. Curled into her. Dramatic rising and falling of his spine with each breath. Collecting… air, the smell of her, her legs still wrapped about him, though less tightly. She is loose and utterly spent. Unwinding.

After a moment of rest, he wraps an arm around her waist. Draws out of her, gently—what sudden _absence_ —and lowers her to the furs, before he collapses alongside her. She turns her head to watch him. His eyes are closed, cheeks still colored. The pace of his breath slowing, gradually. 

She reaches out to touch him. Fingertips fluttering to rest on the side of his face, thumb tracing the path of his blush. Slowly his eyes open and seeing her he sucks in a breath, deep an unsteady. An exhale that is almost a sigh. 

He reaches up to take her hand in his, to guide it to his mouth, to press a kiss into her palm. He does not release it. Strokes her hand with his while he watches her.

“Ar lath ma.”

And it still grips her to hear those words. Wrenches something within her. She pulls his hand to her, presses her lips to his knuckles in a reciprocal kiss; returns the words, “Ar lath ma, Solas.” She catches her bottom lip between her teeth. Releases. “Now I understand why you wished to wait.”

Speaking through grins. “Was it worth it?” His eyes narrow with a smile that crinkles their corners. “I had hoped to reward your patience.”

“Well worth it,” she replies, with enthusiasm. Then a light laugh. Eyes darting away before they find his—linger. “Though you may come to regret it. Now I won’t leave you alone.”

Solas considers her for a moment. Pensive. Murmurs, “What a pity that will be.” And he is trying to be sly and provocative, as when they were courting, but mostly his words are soft—still in awe of her.

He releases her hand, brings his own to her neck, softly guides her towards him. A kiss—his lips closed around hers before he releases her, breathes, mumbles against her lips, “Are you thirsty?”

She grins at him, nods. His prophecy come to pass.

He guides them further into the shelter of the tent. They negotiate around the stains they have left on the furs, and he sits, and lifts the ceramic jug to her lips. The water is cool, and sweet to taste. Before he takes a sip himself he places a pillow in his lap, guides her down to rest her head upon it. 

Only when she is settled does he drink.

From out of no where he produces a knife, and reaches gently over her body to the bowl of fruit. There is not much to be found here in the wasteland, but he has collected two pieces—more modest looking than their worth—of a kind she has become especially fond of during their time in the desert. Small fruits, with dimpled purple skin and rich, ruby-red flesh. He sits with his back to the tent so that, if she wishes, she can look out at the fire, the Rift, the stars, the aurora. But she only looks at him. The careful, sure motions of his fingers as he slices into the fruit. The look on his face.

Quietly consumed with one thought of self-reflection: she cannot remember the last time she was this happy. Like a star, it gleams within her.

( _Later, she will feel guilt, but it will not lessen her confidence in this assertion: even with the Inquisition, what lays before them, what pains she has suffered until then, she does not think she was ever this happy, even with her Clan. Such vulnerability—a terror of a truth. That with him she is better than she has ever been._ )

“Thank you, Solas. For all of this.” In response he smiles, offers her a sweet slice of fruit, slides it between her opened lips. 

“It was my pleasure to do it,” he said, quietly. “It is less than you deserve.”

“But it is all that I wanted.”

He looks on her, silently. That shadow on his features—then he stoops, bends to press his lips against her forehead, before he resumes the task of slicing the fruit in his hand. Purple juice bleeds along his fingers.

She turns away from him, her gaze to the desert. The fire has burned down to nearly nothing, no more than smoldering embers and a few persistent flames. 

Such happiness. Such warmth. Who knew it was to be found in a place so wrecked by the Blight? Wherever her army is, they have pitched their tents. Many of the soldiers are already sleeping. Quiet. Some peace in the thought, but she resents any reminder of her responsibilities—she pushes the thought from her mind as Solas offers her another red slice of fruit—

— _four-legged flash of white, staring, stalking, luminous beyond the firelight—_

And for a moment she is shocked into alertness—she sits up at once, straining her eyesight past the fire into the darkness. She had _seen_ it. _She had seen it,_ she would swear it, but now there is no trace of it. Only the gaping blackness of the Abyss beneath the stars. Her heart pounds. Crashing in her chest. The sound of rocks echoes, tumbling into the Abyssal Rift. And disturbed by what? Some white-furred fright? Sweating—the heat from the fire or the flush of her arousal is much too much. She cannot _breathe._ She cannot—all the danger she has felt in this desert shrinking down to this pinpoint of a moment and surely, _surely_ she is mad. There and then gone, and how, _how_ has it found her out in this waste? No benevolent thing, she thinks, would go in such silence. Ominous. The realization of a month of fear, spent on the edge of things. This love. This battle. Bloodshed. [ _The red juice along his fingers like blood, and the split of his lip. What he will do—what_ she _will do—]_ And this flash of white most horrifying because it is empty of meaning, means nothing, signifies _nothing._ Just watches, and waits, and she does not know why, can’t _imagine_ —

[ _—as she pushed her hips backwards against his to accept all him fully, but they did not speak. Their coupling was brutal: aggressive, impersonal, efficient. This carnal intimacy where they could not even look one another in the eye, their shared endearment—_ vhen’an _—conspicuously absent from the retinue of cries wrest from their throats. Back arching further, forehead nearly kissed against the bedroll. And then—_ teeth _—“We can pretend it happened a long time ago,” words whispered against the muscles of his legs so many months later and so many miles north of here, his head fell backwards, face tilted skywards, the back of his hand swiftly flying to his mouth to muffle his keening. “Tomorrow, we can pretend we_ dreamt _it—” the last time she…._ ]

On the dunes, white—

“Thanduwen. _Thanduwen._ ” 

Solas, calling her name. His hand on her shoulder. In the distance: darkness. She shakes her head to collect herself [ _dislodge the mirage_ ] turns to face him. His other hand  holds the knife high above his head, away from her. She remembers the offer of fruit—she must have sat up so quickly she risked running herself on the blade.

And sitting upright—obscuring the fire—her shadow casts his features in darkness. [ _An eclipse_ —]

“What did you see? Was it a darkspawn?” he asks her. And his body is coiled with another kind of tautness now. Preparing to spring into action. To stand and defend her against all that would assail her.

If only he could…but even his love cannot protect her from this threat. A sickness that grows in her mind, seeing things that are not there. Or, if there—a threat she dares not name. (There or not-there, seen or unseen—does it matter? Does it alter in any way the threat it could pose to him?)

At once at a loss to explain. What can she tell him? Too long this thing has watched her and she has not disclosed its lurking. She does not want to do so now. Perhaps, if she keeps it to herself, she can forget she ever saw it… perhaps not now, not this night, but in the retelling. When she holds to this night later, she can pretend it was perfect.

“No, I…” and she turns her head back to the outside of the tent to check, and darkness, “it was nothing. Just the dying fire playing tricks on my eyes.”

“Do not fear,” he soothes, his hand rubbing along her shoulder. Already so tense. “Tonight,” he tells her, “you are under my protection.” A kind offer, yet useless—how can he protect her from herself? This danger? [ _This fate_.] Still, she lowers herself back onto the furs. The pillow has been scuttled in her alarm, so she lays her head on his bare thigh, feels the stickiness of his perspiration against her cheek. Prefers the feel of his skin and his strength to the pillow, to any fine silk. Still she stares out into the desert, past the fire—lets her eyes fall closed only when she feels his hand come to rest softly on her head, fingers combing through her hair. 

Then, “Do you wish to go back to the Keep?” Voice tender enough to make clear that he would not resent her if she did. 

“No.” She did not ever want to go back to the Keep, where she was something else, someone else—daytime self, Sunburst self, _Inquisitor,_ and all the titles she had been bequeathed without her consent. Whatever stalked her now had only began to pursue her _after._ After the mark, the titles, the shemlen staring at her like she would redeem them. Or, worse, as though they assumed she _wanted_ to. She thinks of the Still Ruins, the Venatori frozen in time— 

It would not be the most terrible fate, she thinks, to be trapped here eternally with him. 

 _You are under my protection._ But then who would protect him?

She turns over onto her back to look into his face, wrinkled with concern. The lines drawn at his furrowed brow. She lifts her hand up towards him, the anchor casting a dull green light across his features as she smooths her fingers over the furrows. “I know I am safe here, with you,” she said, quietly. “Ar dhruan ma. I know you would permit no danger to befall me, darkspawn or otherwise.”

His fingers comb her hair. It must be filthy—sweat, sand—but still he pushes it from her face. “Ar lath ma vhen’an.”

A smile and a sigh at his words…sweetness. She strokes a path along his jaw. “I think I will never tire of hearing you say that.”

He presses his face against her hand, smiles in return. “Never is a long time.”

“Still,” she insists, and turns her face towards him to kiss his torso just above the place where it meets his thigh. Peers up at him. Implores. “Say it again.”

“Ar lath ma vhen’an.” His hand wanders down her cheek and over her collar, comes to rest between her breasts where he can feel the beat of her heart. “Ar lath ma vhen’an,” and she curves her back upwards into the touch, a _beckoning,_ and there the look in his eye shifts, and he moves his hand to tease her, and, “ar lath ma vhen’an,” only for a moment before fingertips ghost down her ribs, knead thighs, “ar lath ma vhen’an” and said in his velvet voice it is like an incantation to banish the phantoms of the night, “ar lath ma vhen’an,” obliterating, for this moment, those things that haunt them most, “ar lath” until she is ready, wet again, two of his fingers slipped within her “ma vhen’an” curling and pressing, seeking _insisting_ until all thoughts of the wolf or her madness are evicted from her mind. 

 

For tonight. For now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S HAPPENING. Apologies for the length it took to get this update out (and the radio silence here, the time it has taken me to reply to comments) but I was very focused on getting this exactly as I wanted, and I didn't want to rush it.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. <3
> 
>  
> 
> Translations:  
> Amahn ar my rajal na ahnsul isalan pala na. | I have led you here because I want to fuck.  
> Nuvenan ma’palas elvar’el, junuan mah’vir. | I want you to fuck me so hard I ache tomorrow.  
> Tel Abelas | Not sorry/ no regret. (TBH, used here because I could find no phrase for “It’s not important.”  
> Garas | Come to me.  
> Ar eman sule’vi’in’el or’ra o bel’rahnaan. | I am more certain of this than many things.  
> Ame rosemah’da'din | I am about to cum  
> Ar drhuan ma. | I trust you/I believe you.
> 
> Both credit (and apologies) to FenxShiral, whose Project Elvhen I have used (and whose well-thought out work on Elvhen grammar I have inevitably mangled as I try to stitch sentences together) in this chapter.


	18. All Hail the Inquisition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I did not want this,” she cried. “I did not want any of this.”
> 
> “I know, vhen’an. I know.”

The Siege of Adamant before them, and nothing between them: that distance shrunk to naught but panting breaths and satisfied hums and bodily pleasures. Thanduwen woke to the sickly purple dawn with Solas’ arms still wrapped around her, skin-to-skin beneath the furs, safe.

And from what? From herself, maybe.  _A shelter where neither your responsibilities nor your men will find you._  The wards he had cast around their camp kept out more than the cold. And here, it was so quiet: no scouts puttering about, sorting requisition materials, tending the fire. They were—perhaps, for the first time since they had met—completely alone. 

And when she looked at Solas (yet sleeping, lips gently parted) she felt as though she had succeeded in something she thought she would never do: she had outrun the Inquisition. She knew it would not last. But just for this morning, the first thing she felt upon waking was not the weight of her responsibilities. She did not feel the worship and respect of others (undeserved as it was undesired) for all the things she had done and might still do in the name of the Chantry. She was too full of love, a love that made her feel cherished; not worshipped, not  _enshrined._  (There was, she knew now, a difference.)

For this moment, waking beside him, she was wholly Thanduwen, Daughter of Soufei, and nothing more. Only herself.

But she was no fool, and she knew something had changed between them. She could not yet put her finger on it. Everything in the desert had felt changeless, until it changed: until the impermanence of all things was so clear it was irrefutable.

Even the morning looked different, the dust sitting heavier on the horizon. Perhaps, in the Approach, it was a sign of spring, the dust excited by the warmth of the new season returned. Thanduwen watched it mount in the distance like seafood on a tide, content to observe the world waking.

When Solas did wake, Thanduwen felt him before she saw him. Fingers, stumbling under the weight of a sleep so peaceful and deep they were still trying to shake it off, brushed gently, if gracelessly, over her cheek and down her throat. She turned her eyes to hm, smiled.

Something had changed. A new gravity in the way they looked at one another: a line crossed. A knowledge of one another that could not—would not—be forgotten.

[ _No matter what may come._ ]

“On dhea,” she whispered, just for him.

“On dhea,” he replied, his grogginess texturing his voice like gravel. She felt his fingers again at her cheek as he stroked her skin, gently.

“Ar lath ma,” she whispered, leaning closer to him, brushing the tip of her nose against his. And then, yes, “ar lath ma vhen’an,” and after the words had left his lips he tilted his chin and caught her mouth in the first kiss of the morning.

And he tasted like dirt—whatever wards he had set to keep their tent warm had not been enough to keep out the dust. The first stirring of sand had settled in a fine layer over everything in their camp. When Solas ran a hand through her hair, his fingers shook loose a rain of golden grains. She laughed. Then she reached out to return the favor, brushing the sand from his head before settling back into each other’s shared warmth.

Here, sheltered in his arms, she felt utterly herself and utterly safe. But in the contented silence that followed her laugh, as they held one another both in arm and eye, she felt bound to him—more so than she had ever felt to her Clan, or her brother—as though an invisible thread had been tied about them. Her accomplice. And it was beautiful and overwhelming and frightening, to feel so fully intertwined, as though their fates were now as mingled as their limbs.

A silly notion. She chastised herself for it. He had made her no promises, and she would not ask for them.

Instead she hummed to soften the silence, brought her hand up to caress his brow. “I wish we could stay here forever,” she whispered.

“Here? In this a blighted wasteland?” Solas replied, amusement creeping into his voice.

“Does it matter, if I am with you?” Thanduwen turned her gaze back to the landscape, that obstinate stretch of afflicted earth that surrounded them. She sighed.

“But isn’t it so… you're right! It isn’t  _pleasant_. But it’s beautiful, isn’t it, in its own way?” She gestured at the vista in front of her, then recoiled at the sudden onrush of morning chill; she curled her arm inward, wrapping the blanket tighter around their bodies. “There’s life, wasteland or not. Little scrubby bushes, fat succulent plants.” She turned her eyes back towards Solas, and flashed him a conspiratorial look. 

“I hear there are even Dalish out here.”

“You hear?” Solas said. “Are we going to run in to another long lost friend of yours,  _vhen’an_?”

Thanduwen laughed. “You’d better hope not!” Though she doubted very much they were in danger of that. If there were still Dalish in the wasteland, they were so well hidden even their own kin could not find them. And if, after a month, the Inquisition had seen no sign of them, she doubted the Dalish would reveal themselves now. 

“They no longer come to the Arlathvhen,” Thanduwen explained. “They have not for some time now. But I have heard that they live in caves—entire villages, carved into the very cliffs.” She stretched her arm once more to the dusty horizon, motioned vaguely at one of the buttes in the distance, before her arm sunk once more to her side.

Solas rolled over onto his stomach, propped himself up on his elbows so that he lay beside her. Together they surveyed the desert. After a reflective pause, Solas told her, “I traveled here once, long ago. I nearly died from lack of water. I did not see any Dalish.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “It must be difficult, to dwell here when the land provides so little. Why would they stay in such a place?”

“For privacy, I imagine,” Thanduwen responded, dryly. “It’s desolate. No Orlesians to hunt you, no Templars to kidnap you. The terrain is harsh, but for those who respect it and learn to live in harmony with it, it grants a certain kind of freedom.” She turned her eyes downward, idly brushing sand off the pelts and blankets they had slept on. “It’s the same reason, I imagine, that we still hear about Dalish living in the Tirashan Forest, though we have lost touch with that Clan, too.” A hint of a smile crossed her lips. “I hear they live in the very trees. Castles and fortresses built right into the canopy.”

“I did not think the Dalish built permanent structures.”

Thanduwen turned her face to look at him, searching his expression. There was something in the tone of his voice that she did not understand, and did not like. As though these settlements of some permanence displeased him. 

“Most can’t,” she replied, hesitantly, watching his face carefully as she did. “We believed the Dales would stand, but you’ve seen what those buildings look like now.” His face hardly shifted, gave away nothing of how he felt about such news. Thanduwen shrugged. “But hardly anyone goes into the Tirashan forest anymore. It’s rumored to be very haunted—possessed, even—so if they still live there, that Clan is left to their own devices. The Dalish that live there are more bandits than anything, but still…” she sighed, shrugged a second time. “I don’t know. I admire it, the ways that other Clans have managed to survive.”

At those words, Solas was unusually quiet. When she turned to him again she could plainly see the thought that he caged in his mouth, though she could not determine its nature. “What is it?”

Solas merely raised an eyebrow, turned his gaze to the ground between his hands. “I believe in this instance it would be better to hold my tongue.”

Thanduwen liked his words even less than his tone. She could not recall another time when Solas withheld his opinion—though she could recall plenty of times when his silence might have been prudent, when his words had wounded another. Why was he holding back now? If he had withheld his opinion from her before, it had never been so apparent. 

She could not help but wonder if this sudden consideration was inspired by their shared intimacy of the night before. She tried not to wonder if the appearance of such discretion after so long without was a good or bad thing.

She leaned over, nudged his shoulder gently with her own. “I do not want there to be secrets between us, Solas.”

He lifted his eyes to hers. Then he leaned closer, pressed a kiss to the line of her hair just above her ear; she could feel his breath disturb the short hairs that grew there. “I do not want that either,” he said, soft as his breath.

“Then speak.”

It was an invitation she would almost immediately come to regret.

Solas pulled himself away from her, but her eyes followed him, curious. The expression he wore was detached and distant; when he spoke, he did not (or could not?) look her in the eyes.

“You say you admire how other Clans have managed to ‘survive.’ But, Thanduwen—they are  _not_  surviving.” 

Her reaction was instantaneous: she physically recoiled from him. Not by much, but too much to escape his notice, the space between the widening by inches. Yet he continued; if he had seen her reaction, he was unmoved by it. 

“Your people have been pushed to the edges of the continent, scattered and divided so that they cannot stand united and defend themselves against the threats which grow greater each year. Whether by ignorance or complicity, the Chantry and the nations of Thedas allow those who hunt your kind to go unpunished. The list of safe havens grows short, and your numbers dwindle with each passing year. You are not surviving, Thanduwen—your people are  _losing_.”

For a moment, all she could do was look at him—stricken, dumbfounded—and then, not even that. She could not bear the sight of him. She closed her eyes and fell into darkness to shield herself from this man who she had lain with—who she had  _loved_  (did love, still), who had brought her such comfort—who was now speaking of the destruction of her people with such  _callousness,_ his voice unfeeling and cold _._  

Then—so wounded—she wished she had allowed that particular opinion of his to remain a secret.

But then, in the next instant, she felt indignant. If this was how he felt (how he  _truly_  felt) then it was far better for her to know. To know, and to be enraged.

“Losing?!” she finally spluttered. “The Chantry has been trying to assimilate us for Ages beyond count. And despite this—despite the animosity if not firm opposition of almost all the other peoples of Thedas—we have kept our faith. Our  _language._ Our mages raised free from the prisons they call ‘circles,’ our children raised free of the slums they call ‘alienages.’ How  _dare_  you call that  _losing—”_

But Solas did not even give her the consideration of letting her finish, so determined he was to make his point. “These accomplishments you speak of—tree cities, enclaves in the desert—you admit yourself they are but rumors. More likely than not those Clans are dead, and the stories they tell you are like tales told to placate children. They are to protect you against the truth. And if they are real—if those Clans do exist—you must know that they would be as likely to shoot you on sight as they would any  _shemlen_. Like any other _tor’vhen_.” He spat the word. 

_Tor’vhen_. Outsider. [ _Trespasser._ ] It was not a slur—not like  _flat-ear_ —but it was not a kind word, either. Thanduwen had never called him that, too relieved upon waking to find another elf in her company, Dalish or otherwise. Hawen had used the word, the first time she had heard it directed at him, but he had hardly been hateful. And in any case, he seemed overly wounded to be declared an outsider when he so vehemently insisted the Dalish were not his own.

And still, he did not even do her the dignity of looking at her. He would not behold the hurt he had caused her, the way her grief transformed her.

And on today of all days—the day before the Siege—danger. She did not want to fight him, not now. They had slept in late and there was still so much to do and  _she_  did not want to speak carelessly in her anger, as Solas had done. Though in truth she was still so hurt and shocked by his sudden betrayal that she felt fairly impressed she could even string a coherent sentence together without shrieking, questions of compassion and carelessness aside.

Resolved to removed herself, Thanduwen cursed under her breath, rolling her body away from him and out from beneath the furs. “ _Fenedhis,_  Solas. They’re still my people.”

The air was colder outside the warmth of their makeshift bed, but the cold was bracing. Thanduwen welcomed it. She did not hesitate before she started peeling apart the layers of blankets, searching for her smalls. “They are scattered the same as me,” she murmured, stepping into her smalls and pulling them up her waist, before pulling her breastband over her head. “Robbed and disdained.” She cast her eyes about, then bent to seize her pants, pulling them over her legs—in her haste, in her anger, buckling her belt a little too tightly. But she did not correct; she did not want to linger here for even the half second it would take her to rebuckle her belt.

Thanduwen tugged her linen shirt over her head before turning back to Solas. Now, he was looking at her—now, he was listening.  _Good._  “I do not blame them for wanting to protect what they have worked so hard to earn. And if that means they have to shoot a couple of  _tor’vhen_  to keep their autonomy—their  _safety_ —well, then I say that is blood well spilt.” She raised her hands to the air in mock benediction. “Praise Andruil, Goddess of the Hunt! Since violence is the only thing the  _shemlen_  seem to understand.” 

Thanduwen watched him for a moment, then shook her head. She was still furious. She held fast to that fury, because beneath it, she felt something more painful and more difficult to endure: disappointment. She supposed she should have known better. Just because they had not recently spoken about his feelings for the Dalish, that did not mean they had changed. Still, if he would love her—if he would lie with her—she had hoped….

She waved the disappointment off, scowled. “I have so little left to tie me to my people. And you would take what pride I have away from me.”

“And what use is that pride to you?” Solas rebutted, rising out of the bed to pursue her. When he stood, his posture was a perfect display of contempt. There was a poetry in it: the way he lifted his chin, pushed back his shoulders. She hated him for that. That he dared to look so regal and beautiful while he said such cruel things. 

“You wear your pride as a badge, a shield against reality. To afford you some dignity. But behind that pride you feel the injustice of it,” he continued, walking towards her. He gestured out at the desert around them. “The Dalish should not be forced to scrape a living out of naught but bare rock and sand. And nowhere is safe for them—you must realize this. If the  _shemlen_  found something of worth in the Tirashan forest, some valuable ore to plunder from the land, do you think tales of curses would stop them then? They would burn the Dalish city to the ground.” He was so close to her now—he dared even to reach out and touch her, to place a hand on her shoulder. “Recognize your ‘pride’ for what it is: protection from the truth. Admire their resilience if you will but do not romanticize it. To love them for it—that is the path to acceptance, and apathy, and that is dangerous.”

Thanduwen wrenched her shoulder free of his grip; Solas looked started to have solicited such a violent reaction to his touch. (Just minutes ago, it had her crooning.)

“Apathy?” Thanduwen repeated, incredulous.

Something within him shifted—Solas seemed to come back to himself. Whether he had finally realized how poor his choice of words, or whether it was the way she had wrenched herself free from him, she did not know. But his face softened. “Thanduwen—”

“Don’t.” She turned on her heel and walked away from him. She stooped to pick up her boots, but left all else behind. She did not wish to linger here. Barefoot, shoes in hand, she strode out across the desert.

He called after her: “Please, wait.” She did not listen.

But she did stop—she hesitated the moment she crossed the boundary of his magic. At once, the temperature plummeted. A shiver ran through her, and she wished for her cloak; in her furor, she had left it in the tent. 

She turned, and saw Solas coming after her. He had managed, at least, to pull on his pants.

She called out to him. “Do you think me apathetic or stupid, or both? Which is it?”

“Neither!” he asserted, jogging after her. “Thanduwen, I chose my words poorly. I did not mean to—”

But it was her turn to cut him off. “Do you think I don’t know my own people are dying? Do you think I am that ignorant? ‘Oh, look at this poor backwards Dalish girl. She dares to be so haughty and  _proud,_ she must not realize in Orlais her people are  _hunted for sport._ ’”

“I do not think that of you,” he insisted. Too tender, his voice. Too apologetic.

“And what would you have me do in the place of my pride, you who claim to love me?” Thanduwen continued. “Would you have me sneer at Clan Lindiran for traveling the old roads of the Dales, call them foolish for endangering themselves so? Or should I collapse into a heap under the weight of so many ages of sorrow, under the mountain of so many long dead? If I was so stricken with grief for what my people had suffered that I could barely function, would that be display enough to convince you that you needn’t  _remind_  me?”

He was close enough now to touch her, and she could tell by the restlessness of his hands that he wanted to. But she did not wish to be touched. This he knew. He would not cross that line again. 

"That was callous of me. I meant not to remind you of their plight, but to remind you of your own strength. I say these things not to wound you but because I love you. When I look at you..." then he paused, chose his next words very carefully. "I see a future for the people. I see a possibility of change, one that did not exist before. You asked me what I would have you do: I would have you recognize your own strength, and recognize the way that Clan Lindiran looked at you. How they saw you.”

But in that moment Thanduwen cared little for how anyone saw her. She did not want to be anyone’s future. She wanted to break things. In her fury, she wanted to destroy; she was positively vibrating with the impulse.

How presumptuous of him, to speak of Hawen and his Clan as though he knew them! As if he understood them! In truth, Blackwall knew the Clan better than Solas, for they had spent more time in the company of Clan Lindiran without Solas than they had with him. She had believed she had forgiven him for this. But that he would accuse her of such things—apathy, shortsightedness—and dare to tell her he did so because he  _loved her_ … these things made plain to her she did not forgive him. Not wholly. 

If he had wanted to know how seriously she took the fate of her people, then he should have been at her side to support her—as he had pledged—as she traversed Dirthavaren, winding among the graveyards and ruins, the bones of her people crumbling into dust underfoot. That dead empire, that stolen homeland. A land of broken promises.

That he would think it was his place to remind her—she knew. She had seen it, and she knew, and she she could never escape knowing it: she carried that knowledge with her, and it was tied to her person as inextricably as the blood writing on her face. She had grieved—and he had  _abandoned her_ , in that place of grief, to grieve alone. Only to mention the fate of her people now as if she had never given it a passing thought. Those thoughts had consumed her. If he didn't know that, he might have learned as much if he had not left. 

_I say this not to wound you but because I love you._ She hated him, for that.

Thanduwen stalked closer to him until they were inches apart, lifted her chin to look him in the face, hissed and seethed, clenched teeth when she asked him:

“Tell me then,  _tor’vhen_ , how did my own people see me?"

Her words surprised him, though Solas recovered quickly. But for a brief moment, before he regained control of his features, she saw how deeply her words had pained him. 

She had wanted to break things—she had succeeded. Now, she regretted it. 

There was a bang—a pop, and a crackling. Solas raised his eyes to something in the distance behind her. Thanduwen turned just in time to see the flare, the red brilliance of its embers already obscured by the morning haze. As the last of its skyfire winked out, they could hear clearly even over such distance the blaring of horns. 

The Keep was sounding the alarm. 

Solas' brow furrowed. He kept his eyes on the Keep for any further indication of what might be amiss. But Thanduwen turned her eyes South across the desert, and what she saw on the horizon emptied her instantly of all fury and replaced it with fear. 

Though it was the first she had seen, Thanduwen knew it by name: Harding had warned her. The vision was faint in the distance, but with every passing second, the cloud appeared denser, climbed higher. It billowed like a ship’s sail, and beyond its reach she could make out nothing at all, the buttes and the canyons swallowed up in its wake, indiscriminate in its appetite. 

The word a hush on her lips, as though she did not quite believe her eyes:

"Sandstorm."

Thanduwen seized Solas' hand and yanked him out of his inertia, dragged him behind her until he was running alongside her. She dropped her boots, left them abandoned in the dirt—they were dead weight, and they had little time to lose. Her feet beat against the cold, hard ground as they made an all out sprint for Griffin Wing Keep. 

"We must take shelter!" Solas shouted beside her. "We'll never make it!"

And maybe he was right—she could see the Keep across the distance but did not trust herself to gauge it. How long had it taken them to walk here last night? She tried to remember as they ran. But then they had been dawdling, pausing along the journey for affection and kisses. 

Between her and the Keep, she saw no rocks against which they might take shelter. The tent would provide none, no matter how expertly it had been pitched. Perhaps, if pressed, thy might hold a barrier… but she did not want to try to hold a spell against such a force less she had no other choice.

"We have to try!" she shouted back, gave his arm another insistent tug. "Hurry!"

The going was sloppy. Solas’ legs longer than hers, and it was hard for them to match one another's stride. She stumbled—but his grip around her hand was firm, and the strength of his arms stopped her from falling. Clumsy as their combined gait may have been, they would not release their grip on the other.

And the storm advanced. 

They ran. When she guessed they had crossed about half the distance to the Keep, she felt her arm pulled violently from behind. Solas had come to a dead stop. 

"What are you doing?" She cried. 

"The storm,” he said, dreamily, looking out at the dustcloud, squinting. “It is too slow.”

“Let us not wait for it to speed up then!” she asserted, and gave his arm another futile yank.

“Thanduwen, quiet,” Solas said. He watched the storm, puzzled; he shifted his feet on the ground beneath them. “Can you hear that? Or, feel it.”

She hesitated, turned her attention to the feeling of the ground beneath her bare feet. They were already stinging, half numb from having run so long and so hard, unprotected as they were. The murmur of dust grains pattering about her ankles felt no different than on any other day. But then, she felt it—something deeper than the surface. A measured pounding. 

Thanduwen looked up at the storm, her lips parted in shock. Then she passed a glance at Solas, seeking reassurance.

“It can't be,” she whispered. horrified. 

Then they saw it: two figures riding at the head of the storm. They were small and Thanduwen could hardly make them out against the hulking mass of sand, but she thought that the smear of their color against the storm had an undeniable horizontal weight. A stag—a hart? She wished she'd had the sense to take a spyglass with her last night. 

[What the spyglass would have revealed to her, if she had it: at the head of the storm that churned with just as much menace as the Breach had ever managed rode Commander Cullen Rutherford and Commander Fiona of Montsimmard, their mouths covered with moistened cloth, their eyes protected by a special glass lenses, made to order in the furnaces of Serrault. Commander Fiona raised her staff above her head like a baton, as though she were a leader of some macabre marching band, a Herald of Death. For with that gesture rose a cry of such volume that even Thanduwen could hear it, though she could not make the words, as every soldier in her army raised their voices in unison.

“ALL HAIL THE INQUISITION.”

A faint boom: the mages on the front lines wove a powerful barrier beneath the magic they had used to suspend the sand, to cover their approach, then dispelled it with a sweeping gesture. The storm fragmented and dissolved, the plumes of dust dispersed in a powerful wave. Sand was scattered across the desert: a moment later, even at such distance, Thanduwen would feel the sting of it on her face.]

And then the army, unclouded by the storm the mages had brewed about them to conceal their coming, was revealed to them in full. Behind Cullen and Fiona, soldiers beyond counting: archers and mages, pikeman and engineers. Even in the dull light of morning, the sun no more than a tarnished coin behind the dust, their armor shone with a cold threatening light. Behind them they carried a retinue of war machines: at this distance, she could make out the shapes of great trebuchets and battering rams suspended in frames, wheeled across the desert so that her army could crash upon Adamant with brutal force. Such terrible power and might, and all of the soldiers walking with such measured, united gait that the ground trembled beneath their feet. 

And Thanduwen wept. 

Solas collected her into his arms and pressed her face to his chest, and this time she did not resist his touch. The army marched in her name, under her banner, but the sight of it had her trembling all the same. She knew it for what it was: an army of zealots, ready to descend upon Adamant for holy retribution, a violence they did not question because they had been told it was sanctioned and blessed by their God. They marched under the protection of their Maker—their cause was just.

She had hoped never to see such an army raised in her lifetime; yet here it was, and it answered to her.  _I would have you recognize your own strength._ He was right. And now, seeing the men and women who were the very embodiment of her strength, she would never forget it.

(She prayed:  _Mythal, please, let Loranil not be among them._ )

Solas pressed a kiss to her forehead, ran his hands through her hair. Softly, gently, “They will be expecting you to greet them.”

“I did not want this,” she cried. “I did not want any of this.”

“I know,  _vhen’an_. I know.”

 

Half an hour later, she stood above the reinforced gate to Griffon Wing Keep and watched the final approach of her forces. She had lingered in the shelter of Solas’ arms for a moment before she had resumed her return to the Keep. She arrived barefoot and shivering before one of the scouts brought her the formal garments Josephine had sent for her to wear on the occasion of the military’s arrival: all black velvet and braids of rank. Thanduwen had changed, draped herself in a fresh cloak of dark black fennec fur and gold trim, and moved to the entrance of the Keep, where she could be seen welcoming her army on the penultimate morning of their campaign. Tomorrow, they would march on Adamant; their journey was almost at an end.

Although the initial shock of the army’s might and mass had worn off—she had collected herself, stifled her tears—still the sight of them stole the breath from her lungs. There were so many bodies, so many people with lives to which (they surely knew) they might not return _._  She must have known before now the size to which her army had swelled, but reading reports on training exercises and the number of new and willing recruits was very different from seeing them marching in formation across the barren desert, machines of war lumbering in tow. She would not soon forget the terror that had struck her heart when she realized that beneath the storm of dust and sand were the bodies of men and women she was sending to fight on the Inquisition’s behalf. 

They would break Adamant. It would shatter beneath their might like porcelain struck by the fall of a hammer. This, she must believe; she gave herself no choice but to believe it. The siege would begin the next evening, and with the appointed hour so close at hand, she could no longer entertain thoughts of failure. But she did wonder with sickening dread how many men and women would lose their lives before victory was assured.

(How best to honor such sacrifice? Such selflessness? How to repay it?)

Cullen and Fiona led the army’s final approach. As they reached the keep gates, Thanduwen could hear the drums pounding to keep the rhythm of their march, the dull stomp of ( _how many hundred?_ ) united footfalls as they approached the Keep. Just outside its walls, they came to a stop with such precision that each body stilled at once. An exquisite and terrifying geometry in the straight lines of their formation. From the ramparts of the Keep, they looked so small. They might have been figurines, no more than the pieces her advisors moved across the War Table, but for the way the Inquisition’s banners waved gently in the dustbreeze.

_No_ , she reminded herself.  _They are men_. It would be easy, she knew, to think of them as less than that, as their sum instead of their individuality. But she would not. She would not absolve herself of her responsibility for them so easily.

How neatly they all stood, waiting command. Then, Cullen raised his hand in a fist above his head, and at once, all voices raised in unison:

“ALL HAIL THE INQUISITION. LONG LIVE THE HERALD OF ANDRASTE.”

A shiver ran down Thanduwen’s spine. She fought for the strength to keep her posture regal, imperious—controlled. 

_What have I wrought?_

_After this day, will my name forever be synonymous with violence?_

But for all her distress and dread, she could not deny that the army was in far better shape than last she had seen, both in practice and in spirit. In this, at least, she felt relief: come what may in the passing months, installing Fiona as co-Commander had improved the discipline and (hopefully) the capabilities of the army. Whether or not Cullen had been deserving of her mercy—whether or not he deserved to retain his position after Thanduwen had learned of the life he had led in Kirkwall—under his partnership with Fiona, the Inquisition’s forces were more prepared for this confrontation than she had hoped. That gave her some heart. 

But, if looks could be believed, it did nothing to cheer Cullen, even though this should have been a moment of pride for him. He rode beside Fiona at the front of the army, and she could see him clearly now that he was more than a smudge of color against the sand. Fiona looked alert—invigorated, even, by their arrival—but Cullen looked weary. She would have thought he would be pleased—he was so devoted to his work—but he looked haggard, and although his armor nearly concealed it, she could see the slump of his posture beneath the metal and feathers.

Trumpets announced their arrival. From behind her, Thanduwen heard the call of one of Rylen’s men, “ _raise the gate!_ ” and then the clanking of metal against metal, the groaning of gears as the great portcullis was lifted high enough from the ground to permit the entrance of the Commanders’ harts.

The width of their antlers meant the harts had to enter the Keep single file; Cullen idled his steed to yield to Fiona. As his hart stamped impatiently, he raised his eyes to the ramparts where Thanduwen stood. She watched as he placed his hand over his heart, and inclined his hand to her in deference. A gesture of loyalty, but it did not have the intended effect; she felt faintly nauseous. Her stomach flipped. 

Other than the ravens that had announced the army’s progression across Orlais, and the few meetings she had in the War Room before she had left for Dirthavaren, she had not spoken with Cullen at all since that day she met him in his quarters. They had certainly not been alone together. Two months later and she still did not know if she had made the right choice: time and brought her no certainty. Had she been right or wrong, to spare him? Had she been too severe? Or too lenient? Even the sight of her army—formidable—gave her no greater sense of resolve about the decisions she had made that day, when the walls of Cullen’s bedroom had closed in around her, when the decision of what to do with him had seemed to be tied to the distance between the kind of leader she aspired to be, and the leader she actually was.

[ _Still, still: she could not look at him without seeing the skulls of the Ocularum, Tranquil made complacent, abandoned, uncared for—slaves._ ]

Cullen turned inside; she heard calls of greeting, the sound of the hart’s hooves on the paved stones of the lower bailey.

Thanduwen gave one last look at her army, the lines of men stood at attention. She raised her arm to them in greeting and they cheered, raised their banners to the desert breeze. Then she turned inside. 

 

A tent had been erected in the upper ring of the Keep for her meeting with her Commanders. They two had already planned the assault, but Thanduwen still needed to be briefed on the strategy of the siege and make any changes she felt were necessary, for they did not entrust such important information to the care of ravens—not even Leliana’s. 

Along the tent’s walls had been prepared a slender table of food, such as was available in the Keep. It was not a lavish meal by any standards—there was one hot dish, pan-fried roots of one of the native plants, presented alongside boards of preserved, salted meats and dried fruits—but it was the best meal Cullen and Fiona had been offered since Skyhold.

Still, the food was hardly touched it. Instead, the Commanders set about at once unrolling the maps and drawings of Adamant that Leliana had secured for their reference, spreading them out on the large round table in the center of the tent. Scrawled around the drawings and architectural diagrams were notes in Fiona’s hand, conjectures she had made about the strength of the structure based on anecdotes and old stories she had been told in her days as a Grey Warden.

Fiona cupped a handful of nuts in her left hand, her right hand free still to gesture and point at the maps on the table below. “The fortress has stood for seven Ages, at least, but that time has not been kind to it. It was abandoned in the Blessed Age when the maintenance of the site became too costly, even for the Wardens. At that time, there were existing structural deficiencies, but I cannot say precisely what they were, or how they may have recently been reinforced by the Wardens that now occupy the fortress.”

“Would they have reason to make such reinforcements?” Thanduwen said, glancing up from the map to look at her advisers.

“We cannot say if Erimond has maintained contact with the Venatori outside of Adamant,” Fiona said, taking a sip from a glass of wine. She was the only one of the three of them drinking—she seemed wholly possessed of herself. “It would be difficult—and risky—but he may. In which case, there was nothing we could have done to conceal our coming. After your encounter with him at the Ritual Tower, I am certain he expects a battle, but he may not know our number, nor the inventory of siege equipment we carry. That will give us some advantage. Our battering rams will make short work of the doors, and our ladders have been built to clear the ramparts, even at our most conservative estimate of their height. Additionally, we have a few surprises that even the Venatori could not anticipate by sight alone.” She paused, looked at Cullen pointedly; when he did not respond, she called to him. “Commander Cullen. Would you like to brief the Inquisitor on the new tactical formation we developed?”

Cullen looked up at Fiona, blinked as if he was coming out of a spell. Thanduwen could not remember the last time he had looked so distracted. Until now he had always devoted himself fully to his role, fanatically focused on the responsibilities his position carried. But it was more than that, too. He looked worn… thinner, maybe, than when she last saw him. It was hard to gauge under the mass of his armor, but she could see the hint of it in his cheeks. They looked less full. Almost gaunt.

“Yes,” he said, slowly—then, coming into himself, “yes,” asserted. He straightened his shoulders, looked across the table at Thanduwen, palmed the pommel of his sword—a gesture that, she knew by now, he did more to comfort himself than to threaten another. 

He cleared his throat.

“The Templars in our army who defected from the Order are vastly outnumbered by our mages. Fiona and I have split them into units: one Templar to every five mages, more or less. We know the Veil over Adamant is thin, and will be even weaker if the Grey Wardens are still binding their mages to demons when we arrive. This puts our mages at great risk.”

“And you have devised of a way to mitigate that risk?” Thanduwen asked, skepticism clear in her voice as she glanced between Cullen and Fiona.

Cullen nodded his head. “I believe so, Inquisitor.” Idly, he brought his free hand up to run over the embossed metal of his vambrace, where he still wore the Templar crest. “Until now, Templars have used their abilities to reinforce reality in its totality. But we thought, well.” “What if the Templars could wield their abilities with greater precision? What if they could stop things from coming from the other side, but not the mages from pulling magic through?”

Thanduwen narrowed her eyes. She was not sure she understood, because if she did, what Cullen was suggesting was a tremendous advantage, almost too good to believe. “What do you mean?”

“We have developed in our Templars a skill, taught them to protect the mages against possession and, to a limited extent, repel any demons who may be attempting to breach the Veil, all without compromising a mages ability to cast offensive spells.”

For a moment, Thanduwen was mute. Then, she managed, “I did not think that such a thing was possible.”

Fiona shrugged. “No one has ever tried. Templars were trained to stop mages from casting magic; no one until now has bothered to really consider what the other applications of that particular skill are. The theory is…” and here she winced, waved her hand in the air,  _so-so_ , “and I don’t think any of us could really explain to you  _how_  it works. But it does. We have practiced in drills.”

“So the units,” Cullen continued, “will mount the ramparts on ladders to cut off the Warden’s reinforcements here, and here.” He pointed to the diagram of Adamant on the table below them. “We can use the fortress’ structure to create choke points to control the fighting, and carve you a path to Clarel.” 

But then Cullen paused, met Thanduwen’s eyes. His expression of renewed focus transformed into one of confusion. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You came up with this?” Thanduwen asked, incredulous.

“I—yes.”

He was looking at her warily, as if he expected chastisement, or suspected that beneath her disbelief she was disappointed in him. But was he truly so oblivious to what he had done? Templars, the Chantry had insisted, were trained to “protect” mages. Yet only now, after centuries, Cullen had come up with a way for them to do just that in a practical way. A radical notion. Thanduwen had let him keep his job, not knowing whether or not she was right to spare him. He had been looking for penance but she didn’t believe that he knew what that meant, the work it would take to earn it. But now….

Fiona’s eyes looked at Cullen, then at Thanduwen. They narrowed ever so slightly as she measured the weight of this moment between them, observing it, though she could not understand the cause of it. When the silence wore on, she cleared her throat. “She’s impressed with you, Cullen. You’ve struck her speechless.”

Cullen blinked, straightened himself, cast a glance to Fiona as if he did not quite believe her. Thanduwen met Fiona’s eyes only briefly: there was something knowing in them that she did not like, and she could not hold her gaze. She forced a smile, thought it was uneasy and unconvincing.

“You’ve done fine work, Commanders,” she said, addressing them both. “But when the siege begins tomorrow…” she knitted her brow. “I do not want to take any unnecessary risks. Victory will not come without a cost. If we are lucky, with Fiona and Alistair fighting alongside us, some of the Wardens will surrender. But I would rather spill Warden blood than Inquisition blood. Protect our army. Protect as many lives as we can.”

“As you wish, Inquisitor,” Cullen said; Fiona bowed her head in agreement.

The tent’s entrance opened; Knight Captain Rylen entered. He saluted each of them, then turned to Thanduwen. “Apologies, Inquisitor, for this intrusion. But might I borrow Commander Cullen for a moment? I have been told some of Lady Jader’s siege equipment requires maintenance before it is ready for tomorrow’s siege. If we are to complete the work before dawn, I would like to organize my men now, so the we can begin as soon as possible.”

Thanduwen tried not to look so relieved. “Of course, Knight Captain.” She turned to Cullen. “Return when your business is concluded.”

“Yes, Inquisitor,” he deferred, then followed the Knight Captain out of the tent. She could hear the tenor of Cullen’s voice as it receded across the Keep, detailing how he wished the machines to be calibrated and serviced.

(Had it just been her imagination, or had he, too, sounded relieved to be excused?)

When she turned back to Fiona, she found that the former Grand Enchanter was watching her with a look that somehow managed to be contemptuous and disinterested all at once. Fiona had seen that unspoken thing between the Inquisitor and Commander Cullen, and she did not like it; still, she did not offer her opinion, nor pry for an explanation. She simply raised an eyebrow, turned her gaze back to the nuts in her palm. It was as though she were cautioning Thanduwen without saying a word.

This did not surprise Thanduwen. She did not take the improved performance of her army as a sign that Fiona thought any better of Cullen than she had two months ago. When Thanduwen had offered Fiona the position, she had been honored and eager—when she learned she would be working alongside Cullen, she had been less so. Thanduwen did not blame her for that reluctance. She knew that asking the former Grand Enchanter to work alongside one of the most notorious of Templars was to ask a great deal.

It was only when Thanduwen reassured her that Cullen would face her justice after the war was over that Fiona acquiesced, and even then she had made a point of saying that she was only doing so for the benefit of the mages who would be safer under her leadership.

Although the sentiment may not have been shared, Thanduwen felt a kinship with Fiona. The two of them had been thrust into unwanted positions, shouldering unasked for responsibilities. Privately, she thought Fiona stronger than herself; if Thanduwen had been given the same choice she had offered the former Grand Enchanter, she was not sure she would have taken the same path. 

Thanduwen eyed the entrance to the tent, then meandered closer to Fiona so they could speak with their voices lowered—she did not wish to be overheard. “How has it been? For you. I know that I asked a lot of you when I offered you this position.”

Fiona glanced at her, and no matter how brief the look, it was withering. She had no interest nor use for words of consolation—she had known what she was getting herself into when she accepted. “Cullen has been surprisingly deferent, and eager to learn what he can from me. And he has been very polite—almost too much so, if you ask me, so afraid to overstep or offend.” She turned her eyes once more to Thanduwen’s, held them. “You put the fear of Andraste in him, Inquisitor.”

Thanduwen’s eyebrows lifted, her eyes widened. “So the arrangement has been working?”

Fiona held her gaze, then nodded to the tent’s entrance, out towards the Keep. “The proof is in front of you, Inquisitor. Your military is in excellent shape, and the soldiers well-prepared for this assault. I will not say that working alongside the former Knight Captain has been pleasant, but…” she sighed, conceded, “it has been admittedly less terrible than I imagined, if that is what you are asking. I have withstood worse discomfort.”

Thanduwen watched the entrance to the tent for any sign of disturbance, of Cullen’s return. “Do you find his remorse to be genuine?”

Fiona huffed in amusement. “Inquisitor, I have no use for remorse, genuine or otherwise. But regardless of his motivation, he does appear to be trying to do better.” Then Fiona shrugged, and her mouth curled into a knowing smile. “I do have to wonder how much of that was inspired by you, Inquisitor, as he was not compelled to seek me out when our alliance was originally struck.”

She did not know what Fiona was implying but she chose, for the moment, to disregard it. “And has he looked… you’ve travelled with him, across the desert. Does he look weary to you?”

“I would not presume to know him as well as you, Inquisitor,” Fiona said, dryly, “but I cannot recall a day with him when he has not looked overworked. Honestly, I think sometimes he is putting it on.”  
  
It was not unfair of her to think that. After all, Thanduwen knew the true cause of such weariness, and she suspected that Fiona did not. She wondered, briefly, if it was a betrayal not to tell Fiona of Cullen’s lyrium addiction, to let her know what her partner was struggling with, but immediately she thought better of it. The truth was not hers to divulge. And if Fiona had not noticed anything amiss, then perhaps Cullen had it well in hand.

All this in mind, Thanuwen only smiled at Fiona, nodded her head. “Perhaps he is.”

“There is one more thing you might address, while Cullen is otherwise occupied," Fiona said, opening a leather pouch at her waist. As she rummaged through the papers within, she asked her, "Do you remember that Venatori advisor you had assassinated in Wycome?”

Thanduwen’s heart sank. Her Clan was still camped outside the city’s walls, and any news Fiona brought of Wycome would undoubtedly affect them. “I do. Just as I remember that after his death it was discovered he had planted lyrium in all the city's wells.”

“All the wells, save for those of the alienage,” Fiona corrected. She withdrew from the pouch at her side a letter, the seal already broken. “Unfortunately, I bring you more grave news from Lady Volund. With the lyrium in the wells destroyed, the citizens are sick from withdrawal—but not sick enough for it to escape their notice that the elves are the only ones who remain hale."

Thanduwen took the letter from her, read Lady Volunds words carefully. Her eyes widened. A cold that had nothing to do with the desert winter spread through her bones. 

“The nobles blame the elves. She fears that in their rage they will fall upon the city’s elves, and my Clan.”

"But she cautions against sending your forces to their defense this time, Inquisitor," Fiona said. "Which would be difficult anyway, as most of our soldiers are here in the Approach, and what soldiers we have in the Marches are already spread very thin."

But Thanduwen was hardly listening. She was thinking of her argument with Solas that morning.  _You are losing. The list of safe havens grows short._  It seemed a cruel twist of fate, for such news to come to her on this day. And this time, there was little that she could do about it—she was across the continent, as far as she could be from them. Her hand began to tremble—with rage or despair, she could not say—and Lady Volund’s letter began to flutter fretfully. She placed it down on the table, tapped it with her fingers. 

“And what am I to do with this news now?” she asked Fiona, looking at her sharply. "How will my decision even reach Skyhold in time to mount a defense?” She was trying very hard not to blame Fiona—she was only the deliverer of this news, not its cause—keeping her fury out of her voice. “If you had this letter, why did you not send it ahead of your arrival?”

“The letter only reached us yesterday Inquisitor,” Fiona said. “As for news reaching Skyhold...” her voice trailed off, and she reached into her tunic and produced a small red crystal, suspended around her neck by a thin gold chain. 

"This is a sending stone," she explained. "All of the Circles had one before they fell: it was how they communicated. In the rebellion, many were lost. But this one I have retained—its match remains in Skyhold, in the possession of one of the former Senior Enchanters who did not join us for the siege. Your orders will reach Skyhold as soon as you issue them. There is time yet for action."

That quelled some of her fury—but it left despair in its absence. Every time she thought she had secured her Clan’s safety, a new threat appeared to endanger them once again. Thanduwen exhaled, slowly; she ran her hands through her hair. Then, for the first time she had returned to the Keep, she walked over to one of the wooden chairs furnishing the tent, and she sat.

She planted her elbow on the armrest, brought her hand to her forehead, massaged her brow. "What options do I have?"

Whatever judgement Fiona may have held for her—whatever contempt she felt for Thanduwen’s concern for Cullen—it had been replaced with sympathy. Her expression softened, as it rarely did. She had been a mage and a Grey Warden both, but before that she had been born an elf. Among all of Thanduwen advisors, she knew best how this news must weigh on the Inquisitor. Fiona drew a chair up beside Thanduwen, seated herself. 

“Cullen thinks you should send soldiers anyway,” Fiona said quietly. “But that will take time—time you may not have. And if your diplomat believes involving the military would aggravate the situation, I would caution you to listen to her.” Fiona paused, tilted her head to the side. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “I know it may feel like a betrayal to send anything but the mightiest show of force to protect our people,” (and how Thanduwen’s heart raced to her that— _our people—_ acknowledgement of their shared plight instead of a rejection of their similarities) “but I believe that wisdom and cleverness, not brutal strength, is the best hope for their safety now.”

Thanduwen turned to Fiona. She wished she could express how her words of solidarity had comforted her, but she did not know how; what she did know was that she would have to make a choice, and the sooner she could do so, the better. “What does Leliana suggest?”

“The spymaster wishes to send Jester again,” Fiona told her. It was the same agent who had killed the Venatori advisor to begin with, which meant he would be at least somewhat acquainted with the city. “He will get your Clan safely within Wycome’s walls, where they will have a chance to take the nobles by surprise, and better defend themselves.”

Thanduwen balked. “She wants to bring my Clan into the den of the beasts which wish to hunt them?”

“It may be their best chance,” Fiona answered. “Outside the city’s walls, they will be quickly overrun by the nobles.”

Thanduwen turned away from Fiona, directed her eyes to the floor, her mind desperately seeking any other possibility, a plan that would not bring them closer to harm. “What if we send Jester to warn them? Escort them away from the city and into the woods, where they can wait out the withdrawal?”

Fiona was quiet; Thanduwen felt her eyes upon her. She looked up to meet the Commander’s eyes; the way she was looking at her, she felt like Fiona was measuring her. 

“If you did that,” Fiona replied, quietly, “you would be abandoning the city elves to their fate. The Dalish may escape, but then Wycome’s wrath would fall upon the alienage all the harder. Is that what you want?” she asked. “Would your Clan obey such a direction?”

Thanduwen turned her eyes away. She felt torn. As much as it pained her to admit, Fiona was right. She had claimed she would stand for all of Thedas, for those who had been left behind by the Chantry and the nobility. She could not, in good faith, desert the elves of the alienage to defend themselves alone. 

Over the years, those elves had been kind to her Clan. Kinder, still, since they had been displaced in the bandit attack and lost most of their possessions. Drohan had wrote her describing their genoristy: although they had little to give, the Alienage was still willing to share with her Clan. Drohan said the children of the alienage looked at the Dalish like heroes of legend. 

Even if she commanded her Clan to leave Wycome, she doubted her Clan would obey. It would be unlike them to abandon those who had shown them such hospitality when they had been most in need of it. 

“No,” she said. “I suppose they would not.” Thanduwen inhaled deeply, then rose to her feet.

“Tell Skyhold the Spymaster has my consent to act on my behalf in this matter. While you do, please excuse me… I am going to have a short walk around the Keep, to clear my head.”

Fiona nodded her head. “Of course, Inquisitor.”

And without another word Thanduwen thrust open the flaps of the tent, breathed the cold air of the Keep, smoothed her hair out of her face….

Around her the Keep was alive with the sounds of war. Metal on metal. Last minute adjustments to armor, and the sharpening of swords. All of it was detestable to her, and yet she could not escape it.

_You are losing,_  he had said to her.  _I would have you recognize your own strength._  But what good was this army, this great power and influence Solas claimed she had, if it could not protect her people when they were most in need?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: If the ending of this chapter seems abrupt, that is because there is another "half" to this chapter (sort of?) but as it stands it was getting to be well over 18k words, which seemed a bit too unwieldy to edit and update at once. I expect to have that update available (hopefully) by the end of this week, but wanted to post this in the meanwhile—I regret that the last update took so long, so I did not want to wait.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and your lovely comments. :) More to come soon.


	19. We Will Reorder the Very Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The siege approaches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Panic attack depicted in text.

By nightfall the Keep was no less busy than it had been upon the army’s arrival.  The day had been full of busy preparations for the next day’s march, but now, Thanduwen sat bundled in blankets in one of the uppermost towers of the Keep. At her side was one of Josephine’s protégés, an Antivan woman by the name of Amélie, who already a fully trained bard in her own right. In her arms she held one of Josephine's writing tablets, and she drafted words in elegant hand on a piece of parchment illuminated by candlelight. 

They were working on last minute revisions to the speech she was supposed to give to the soldiers tomorrow, before they embarked on the final leg of their march to Adamant. In the past, when the occasion had called for words, Thanduwen had more or less improvised. Now, however, they anticipated the occasion, and Josephine had sent Amelie to help Thanduwen review what she thought she might say ahead of time, to make sure the Inquisitor did not put her foot in her mouth, or cause undue alarm to their allies with her words. 

“The Wardens are the heroes of history, Inquisitor. It is better not to attack them too readily in your speech.”

“But neither do I want to defend them—I don't want the men to feel any hesitation, any guilt about spilling Grey Warden blood. Many of the Wardens themselves are already enslaved and they will not hesitate for a moment. No, I think that in the speech, our mandate should be certain. I shouldn't waver.”

“What about... ‘Long have the Wardens stood as our protectors against the Blight; it is now our sacred duty to protect them against their own destruction.’”

But though she recognized the importance of the exercise, it was difficult to keep her mind from wandering. She was distracted by thoughts of Wycombe, of her argument with Solas, of the siege itself. She recognized the importance of what Amélie was trying to do—how Josephine was trying to help her—but the choice of words felt so useless in the face of so many other fears.

They were mulling over the final remarks of the speech. Thanduwen wanted to keep her comments secular, or in the least inclusive of the diverse belief systems she knew her soldiers held. Amélie thought it was best to include some reference to the Maker or Andraste since, after all, the Inquisitor was "Andraste's Herald" and much of her clout was derived from this association. But Thanduwen had insisted on something that not exclude the non-Andrastians in the army; Amélie had the confidence she could come up with a turn of phrase that would do both. 

Thanduwen was little to no help. Below her, she could see the rows of red tents, pitched with grid-like precision and discipline. 

(Had the armies of the Exalted Marches looked much different—rows of Chantry red—on their march to Halamshiral?)

After this, she would retire to her tent. The army had planned to leave Griffon Wing Keep early the next morning, and begin their march to Adamant, and she would need all the rest she could get. She wondered: would she find Solas there, as she had on so many other nights? Did she even want him there—of course she did. She longed for the comfort of his company, especially in light of the news Fiona had brought her. But she hoped (foolishly, she knew) that he would already be asleep by the time she returned. It had been an exhausting day, and she did not want to conclude it by rehashing the argument they had that morning, which had (to her relief) been interrupted by the arrival of the army before it had gotten really out of hand. 

(Though—she remembered Solas' face when she had spat at him, tor'vhen—perhaps they had been too late to stop the real damage from being done.)

It was confusing—and the last thing she needed now was more confusion. He had been so careless with his words, and that was completely out of character for him—she had only ever known him to be deliberate Stranger still that such disagreement should come after their night of lovemaking. 

She wondered, with a sudden twang of heartbreak, if the argument had been an attempt to push her away—to hold her at arm’s length after a night of such intimacy. If he had not been ready, if they had moved too fast….

“Inquisitor?"

Thanduwen snapped out of her introspection, tearing her eyes away from the sight of the army spread out below her.

Amélie was looking at her pointedly, aware, now, that her attention had been drifting. But they were no longer alone—before them stood one of Rylen’s men. She blinked once in surprise.

“Inquisitor,” he said, gently. “Commander Cullen requests your attention. He's awaiting you in his tent, outside the gate."

“What, now?”

The Lieutenant passed an uneasy glance to Amélie beside her, then looked back at Thanduwen. Insisted, “It’s urgent, Inquisitor, ser. He would not make such a request lightly, he knows how busy you are.”

“Will Fiona be joining us as well?”

The soldier cast his eyes warily at Amélie before replying, "No, ser."

Curious. It was late, and it was not terribly appropriate for her to be visiting Cullen's tent, especially if Fiona was not joining them. She thought of the way Fiona had looked at her earlier when they had been speaking of Cullen, as though she were making assumptions… Thanduwen did not want to encourage further gossip. She did not suspect Cullen of anything untoward, but she also doubted that she was being called upon for official Inquisition business. She liked that even less. She had spared Cullen her wrath for the time being, but she had no desire to become his confidante.

But if Thanduwen was curious, Amélie was equally so. And the last thing she wanted was the bard’s attention focused on her personal matters. She looked at the soldier. 

"I will be on my way shortly, Lieutenant. Thank you for the message." 

Thanduwen turned to Amélie. “My mind was wandering, Amélie, I am sorry. And I do not think I will have time to meet you again tonight. Can we meet again tomorrow morning, an hour before the speech?"

Amélie nodded. "Yes, Inquisitor.” Then Thanduwen rose, wrapped the blankets more firmly about her shoulders, and descended the ladder into the Keep below.   

 

She slipped through the Keep like a rumor. Shrouded in blankets, her vallaslin hidden, her passage was unremarkable. It was a kind of anonymity for which she was thankful. Already she was paranoid about Amélie. 

Even at this late hour, the Keep was bustling with activity. Come morning, many of Rylen's men would not join the siege; tonight, they would stay awake to prepare for the army’s departure as Cullen and Fiona’s soldiers slept. Flashing in the firelight, the blades of swords were being sharpened on whetstone. Fletchers were working through the night, preparing more arrows. The sounds of hard objects striking against each other, a war-song.

Outside the Keep, however, it was quiet—the volume dropped the minute she walked through the opened gate. Pages were still running about, delivering equipment from the Keep and carrying messages, but the sounds of their movements were a quiet hush compared to the industrious cacophony within the Keep’s walls.

Other than their movement the desert was still. Here rested the soldiers who would soon put their lives at risk. For the Inquisitor. For her. The enormity of her army was no less astounding here than it had been from above. As she walked to her destination, she could see down the avenues of tents pitched with such expert precision, a mechanical rhythm of their pattern.

The trebuchets cast a shadow against the night, the shapes of their darkness against the stars like great, hulking beasts….

She knew Cullen’s tent by the two Inquisition banners that flanked its entrance. Outside, she hesitated before she crossed the threshold; she took a deep breath.

Whatever awaited her inside… he was a Commander of her army, and they were on the brink of a great battle, and she could not simply run, now. Could not abandon him (even if his request was untimely) before she knew what he wanted.

She parted the red canvas.

But as soon as she entered, a dark object came within striking distance of her; she lunged out of the way. The projectile whizzed past her head, missing it by inches before it landed on the ground with a dull thump.

“Fenedhis, Cullen! Watch it!” 

“Maker’s Breath!” Cullen said, and he brought his hand up to his chest, fisting the crimson cloth of his tunic. “I did not hear you enter! I… forgive me.”

He was standing at a table in the corner of the tent, the maps of Adamant Fortress spread out in front of him and a wooden case open on the table before him. And he was bent—staggered. He had removed his armor, and was dressed in simple linens, but even their simple weight seemed to burden him. He labored for breath—she watched the dramatic rise and fall of his chest as he tried to suck air into his lungs, but looked no more relieved for it. Trembling? And skinnier, yes. Without his armor he certainly looked thinner than when she had seen him last.

She turned her gaze to her feet, at the object that had nearly struck her. There, lying in the dirt, was a well-worn copy of the Chant of Light. 

Thanduwen looked at the book, then at Cullen. She stooped, picked the book up off the ground, and ventured a step further into the tent as she brushed the dust from its cover. “Cullen, what’s going on?”

He shook his head, as though he already regretted that he had asked her here. “Forgive me, you are busy—so much depends on you—and yet I…. The Seeker isn’t here.” His face twisted into an expression of grief; his free hand grabbed a fistful of his hair. “And though I promised you this would not interfere….”

Thanduwen set the book down on the table, far enough from Cullen’s hands that she hoped he would not be tempted to throw it a second time. Then she circled around the table until she could see the contents of the wooden box in front of him. Though she did not recognize the shape of the phials and distillation tools contained within the velvet-lined walls, she could guess what they were for. 

She took a deep breath. “Cullen….”

He continued as if he had not heard her. “But my promises mean nothing if I cannot keep them, and I can’t, I…” his voice trailed off, and he turned his eyes up to her. They were wide, wild; there was a look of fear and panic in them she had never seen before. The way the wrinkles around his eyes deepened suggested that he had worn that look of horror far too frequently in the past. In the labored sound of his breath she detected a wheezing, a hiss.

Cullen shook his head, shuddered. “How many lives depend on our success? You said yourself that victory would come at cost. I swore myself to this cause, and I will not give less to the Inquisition than I did the Chantry... I should be taking it.” Cullen turned his gaze back to the wooden case, his fingers fumbling over the phials so clumsily that he could barely remove them from the box. A glass instrument slid loose from his hands and clattered with a dull, hollow sound against the wooden table.

Watching Cullen’s face, Thanduwen reached out, lighted her hand on the case, then dragged it across the table and away from him; his hands followed it, claw-like, as a starving man after food. 

“Please, please—I can’t, you must let me—”

“Cullen,” she said, her voice as soft as it was measured, “I do not think you would have asked me here if you did not want me to stop you.”

He tugged once more at his hair, turned on her. “Are you even listening to me?” And then the fear was gone from his eyes, his mood changed in an instant but not the pitch of his panic. The scar at his lip twisted as his mouth snarled, furious.

“You are maddening, do you know that? You! You want me to save lives? To prevent further bloodshed? And yet you would not have me at my best, my most capable—without the lyrium I am crippled, a shadow of my former strength. People will die, as people at Haven died because of my foolishness—I don’t know if I can even protect myself, how can I hope to protect them? And I am falling apart before the battle has even begun…”

He turned his gaze away from her and back to the wooden case, now just out of reach; his hands clenched. “You said quitting lyrium was stupid and reckless, and you were right.” No shortage of bitterness in his voice when he added, “As you always are.”

Thanduwen let him speak. Did not interrupt him, though she wanted to. But then he stumbled, loosed his fists so he could brace his weight against the support of the table. Still struggling to breathe, his free hand fisted tighter into his tunic, as though he were trying to wrench some heavy thing off of his chest.

“Cullen…” she repeated—his name, the fourth time, like an incantation—and reached out to him, but then stopped, her hands hovering nervously in the air. He was in such a state, and though she wanted to soothe, she would not do so without permission. Creators knew she was familiar with what it felt like, to be caged by her own emotions, captive to her anxiety. “Can I touch you?”

He looked at her as though she had said something bizarre and inappropriate; she pulled a face. “Not like that. Come here, look.” And she took his hand gently in hers, and guided him to the cot on the other side of the tent. Even after such a long day, and all of it spent on his feet, Cullen’s cot looked utterly undisturbed. She sat him down on the edge of it. At once, he curled into himself, back bent, shoulders hunched, but “no,” she corrected, gently; she placed a hand on his shoulder, his lower back, and straightened his posture, tried to open up his airways. “Come on, Commander. Breathe. With me, now. Deeper.”

Under her hands, his clothing was damp: the night was freezing, and Cullen was sweating.

Despite herself, and all that had passed between them, she was concerned. Two months ago, Cullen had told her that creeping into his bedchambers unannounced was inappropriate and now he had summoned her here in the dead of night. They were not friends. Thanduwen could not bring herself to call this former Templar a “friend,” and was fairly certain she never would. They were tied together by purpose alone. And yet no longer could she insist that their relationship was exclusively professional because here she was, rubbing circles into his back, whispering to him words of gentleness and encouragement to get him through his latest fitful spell. How she hated the seed of compassion that she felt germinating inside her; how she wished she could rip it from her before it took root.

But this fit, she feared, had little to do with withdrawal—and she knew it because she had been in the same state herself. It was this particular pitch of fear that made her pity him now. And no matter how she felt about him, she could not abandon him to this onslaught of panic.

“You’re alright,” she mumbled gently, softly. “You are safe.” 

It was a practical matter, she reassured herself; she could not have her Commander having a breakdown on the eve of battle. It had nothing to do with compassion, or sympathy. (But still, but still…)

Gradually Cullen’s breathing slowed, and deepened. Only then did he look at her. And though the worst of his anxiety had abated he did not seem at ease: he looked embarrassed, and no less conflicted than he had when she walked in. But now, at least he was not under attack. She asked him, softly, “Is this the first time?”

“No,” he admitted. “But it is getting worse.”

Now that he had recovered, Thanduwen retreated, but as she tried to pull her hands away from his shoulder and back Cullen’s own reached out and held them there. She did not recoil (she should have, she thought) though her eyes widened in surprise.

But more surprising than his touch (chaste though it may have been, it was still a shock) was the notion that she would allow him to touch her. It was a proximity she would not have tolerated mere months ago. She did not understand how, in the time in between—in which she had seen (she thought) the darkest recesses of Cullen’s soul—she had become _more_ amenable (instead of less) to such contact. And he held her hand to his shoulder like a desperate man, a drowning man clinging to debris in a thrashing tide.

Had he changed, she wondered? Was it the change in the way that she saw him that had allowed this shift in their dynamic? Or had she changed?

(Did she tolerate—welcome, even—this thing between them? If she did, was it because she recognized in Cullen’s despair a darkness that she felt growing within herself, something she was incapable of escaping, to slow to outrun?)

The moment of panic has receded but in its wake it had left behind fear. She could feel it in the way he squeezed her hand to reassure himself. The particular, and insidious fear, often a self-fulfilling prophecy: that the panic had not dissipated fully, merely that it was lying in wait, ready to overtake him as soon as she left his side.

A surrender: he squeezed shut his eyes, turned his face away from her. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Do what?”

Ever so slightly he opened his eyes, though he did not turn in her direction. He looked indecisive, on the verge of something. She did not want to be his confidante, but he had chosen her, and the debt she still owed him had not been fully repaid. (Her Clan, in danger, again—but had it not been for him they might already be dead.)

Eyeing her in the periphery of his vision, he asked her, “What did Hawke tell you about Kinloch Hold?”

Thanduwen watched him, cautious. She did not want to hear about the Circle, nor did she want to bear witness to some previously undisclosed wrongdoing. Not now. ( _Not ever_.) She had heard enough about what he had done in Kirkwall; she was not sure she could endure much more. Already his past made their partnership tenuous, and more sins would only weaken the thread that bound them, barely, together. 

She slipped her hand out of his—he did not restrain her a second time—and folded her hands neatly in her lap. Tried not to wring them, though she desperately wanted the distraction.

“She told me that the Rite of Annulment had been invoked. That, had it not been for the Hero of Ferelden, those mages would be dead.”

Cullen gave a mirthless laugh. “I would be dead, too,” he said quietly. “And perhaps I ought to be.” No longer holding her hands, his fingers dropped to his chest, fisted again in the fabric of his shirt—too loose on his body, too much weight lost for it to be healthy—but then he breathed, relaxed his hand, lowered it to his side. “I have never been… whole, after that. Instead I am… shattered, and I can’t put it all right. Like trying to glue back together a broken vase with a piece still missing, and I….” here his voice trailed off. His brow furrowed, and he curled in on himself.

And despite herself, she reached out for him, placed her hand back on his shoulder, corrected his posture. When he was straight, she withdrew, but told him, gently as she could, “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. If it upsets you.” It upset _her_. But the effect the retelling was having on him was plainly worse.

“No,” came the answer, quickly. He was confident, at least, in this. “I want to, and you… before tomorrow, you should know.” He lifted his eyes—looked too long at the wooden case on the table before he shuddered. “Abominations… took control of the tower. It was swift and it was sudden and we were not prepared. Knight-Commander Greagoir sealed the tower to prevent them from escaping, but I… I was still inside.”

“Once they had seized the tower, the Abominations let the demons that tore through the Veil prey freely upon those who remained. They slaughtered…” he paused, his voice wavering, “…everyone, mages and Templars alike, even the children, indiscriminate in their assault. I watched them kill mages before my eyes that I had been sworn to protect. Then I watched them butcher my friends.”

He grew quiet again. The look in his eyes was distant. That alarmed her more than anything else—Cullen was not one for daydreaming, woolgathering, introspection, and now his mind seemed so far from his body and the walls of the tent that surrounded it.

Thanduwen had not been prepared for this, this confession: not of violations committed by him but against him. She had suspected his hatred and fear of mages had been rooted in some past slight. She had never thought it would be something like this—largely because the idea that he could suffer so greatly and then be asked to continue to serve was unthinkable for her.

It did not absolve him. She could not simply lay his sins at the feet of the Chantry as though he were not responsible for the actions he had taken, traumatized though he may have been. But she saw him, at least, a little more clearly. She felt less eager to reject the pity which she felt for him. 

She wanted to touch him again—inexplicable. Didn’t. But spoke, anyway, to remind him of her presence: that he was here, not there, not in that other place of past darkness and pain. “How did you get out?”

His eyes were still staring blankly ahead but at her question, his eyelids fluttered. Then he shook his head, before turning his gaze to the floor of the tent between his feet. “I didn’t.” 

“They… tortured me. Tempted me, haunted me… I was at their mercy for days before Warden Isenril made it to the top of the tower, where they were holding me. Starving. Half-mad. I don’t know why they chose me to keep as their pet. Most days I wish they hadn’t, that they had let me die with my comrades. If I had, then Kirkwall….” His eyes fell to the ground. “I see their faces when I sleep. The things that I have failed to do… worse, the things at which I have _succeeded_ …. And the nightmares, I… I haven’t had a night’s rest since we left Skyhold. I do not think—I cannot endure this much longer.”

His bottom lip trembled, his breathing was uneasy. “You were right. To criticize me as you did in Skyhold. To want to hold me accountable for the things I have done. And when this is over, you will have the justice you seek. But tomorrow…”

“If what you saw at the Ritual Tower is any indication, Adamant will be overfull with demons and abominations of every kind. And I will not face them if I am less than my best. I cannot. Please,” he said, turning to her, taking her hands in his. Imploring. Beseeching. “Please release me. Let me do this for you, for the Inquisition. Let me be the leader the Inquisition deserves. The withdrawal, it has become… excruciating.”

And what was she to say to that? Such an impassioned plea. She let him hold her hands, met his eyes as he desperately searched hers for any sign that she might relent. And she wished to be understanding. She wanted to be sympathetic, and kind; but in that moment what she felt most keenly was rage.

 _Fuck the Chantry._ The only thought she could cling to, mounting in her head like a hellish chorus, louder than her pulse pounding in her ears, _fuck the chantry._

After all that had happened to him, what he had gone through, they had tried to use his trauma to make him into a better tool. A better _weapon_. She detested the banner under which her army marched. The beginnings of a plot in her mind, of what she would do if she lived to see the end of the Inquisition, when all of this was done: she would see the Chantry reformed or she would strike at it with all her gathered strength, with the faith of all who believed in her and would stand alongside her, and she would crush it to dust. She would allow the Chantry to use her as a tool only until the point where she could turn upon it and bring it to its knees. It deserved as much, for what it had done to her people, the Dalish. But it was equally deserving of vengeance for the violence it had inflicted upon those who had relied upon it, who had believed in its goodness and devoted their lives to defending it. 

(And yet—was she any different? Under her banner marched a legion. How many of those sleeping men and women had joined them not because they believed her in her myth, but because the war—her war, now—had displaced them, burned down their homes and left them with nothing to return to? How many risked their lives because they had no other option? Her army. Her Inqusition.)

But no, no; too dark a path to tread, not now, when Cullen needed her help. To descend now into that place would have been selfish. This was not about her. Cullen was holding her hands. He was begging her.

She looked at him, eyes softening into something kinder. She smiled.

“You know, it has been eight months since we met.”

“What?”

“Eight months,” she repeated. “A long time.” She pulled her hands out of his grip so that she could cover his hands with her own, held them gently, softened the clenching of his fingers. “You have withstood worse temptation, I am sure, greater spells of withdrawal than this. Last time we spoke it had you bedridden. You told me you had quit the lyrium when you joined the Inquisition, long before the Conclave. So how long has it really been, then? Almost a year?”

He raised his eyes to her, he did not hesitate: he did not even have to think about it. He knew the number as well as his own name. “Five hundred and thirty-eight days.”

“Five hundred and thirty-eight days,” she repeated, quietly, a gentle awe in her voice. Lyrium withdrawal had driven the entirety of Wycome to the brink of a murderous rage, and yet he had endured it for all these seasons. “More than a year, then. That is a lot of work—a lot of success—to throw away.”

And he knew it, too; the way he knew the length of time so well, that each day that passed without using was a cherished victory. But still he was torn. “The cost has grown too high,” he mourned, pulling away from her.

But she would not allow it; she was not finished yet. She tightened her grip on his hands, leaned closer so that he could not escape her gaze. “I don’t think this is withdrawal, Cullen. And I think you know that too. And I know that this is important to you, and I would not see you stumble because I have put too much on your shoulders.”

“I can’t imagine… how painful it must be. This trauma you carry with you. The nightmares…” she sighed. “Cullen, if I had known I never would have asked you out here.”

He shook his head, his mouth curved into an ugly line. “You have asked me only to fulfill my duty. You have asked no more of me than of any other, and still I fail….” He pulled his hands away from her and covered his face, lapsed into silence.

She had failed to console him, but she would not back down. Thanduwen considered a different approach. She did not like it—she knew that by acknowledging it, being honest with him, she would give him a power over her to which she was not eager to submit—but she thought perhaps she owed it to him. If she was asking him to trust her, perhaps she ought to begin by trusting him.

_Mythal en’aste._

“Do you still have that necklace?” she asked, finally, extending her hand.

Cullen raised his face out of his hands, looked at her warily. No doubt he was remembering the fury the sight of the amulet had inspired in her the last time she had caught him wearing it, and he was not keen to revisit it. But something in her face—soft—must have convinced him. He brought his hands to his neck and pulled the pendant out from beneath his shirt, raised the cord above his head and placed the amulet, gently, in her opened hand.

Thanduwen hummed, pleased at the weight of it in her palm. She did not have many possessions, but when Haven burned, she had lost all of them; the most precious things she had lost were the gifts her Clan had sent her, carvings and stones like the one in her hand now. She had been furious when she had seen Cullen wear this… but it was still a comfort to have in her hands. She mused aloud, “I lied to you, about this.”

To her relief, she heard Cullen laugh. “Yes, I know.”

She smiled. Still ran her fingers over it, this precious thing in her palm that he had no right to bear, but that coincidence or fate had brought to him all the same. “Do you know what it is?”

“No,” he said, “though I was curious. I thought to ask Cilian, but then thought better of it. The sight of it outraged you so. The last thing I needed was to offend him as well.”

Thanduwen made a thoughtful sound. “I’m not sure it would have, but that was a good exercise in judgement, all the same.” Then she looked up at him from the pendant in her palm, and he was looking at her with such rapt attention; this, at last then, the mystery of the carving, had been enough to pull him away (at least for the time being, distract him) from the pain that he carried.

“It is Glandivalis,” she said, quietly. “Shartan’s sword. A gift from Andraste, which she in turn inherited from her mother. It was a treasured heirloom, given as a token of their promise to fight as one against the magisters of Tevinter, to free their people both. An oath.”

Cullen looked at her, curious. “I would have thought such a symbol more at home in the Chantry.”

“I doubt they would seek to glorify an alliance they have done their best to erase,” Thanduwen replied, eyebrows raised. “No. It was a popular motif in the Dales; a reminder of our bond to one another.” She added, dryly, “As you can imagine, since the Exalted Marches—since the fall of the Dales, and the breaking of the promise—it has fallen out of usage and into obscurity.”

She paused, took a deep breath—then laughed, lightly, at the absurdity of her situation. “It is a fancy way of saying my Clan is in the Inquisition’s debt. But more truthfully, I am in yours.” She quieted, gave a smile, then lifted the necklace out of her palm and placed it once more around his neck. “It means that I am honor bound to help you, in a way. For better or for worse.” 

Cullen could barely look at her. Instead, he looked at the pendant, raised his hand so he could hold it in its palm. At last, he regarded at it with the solemnity he should have from the beginning, knowing now the gravity of what it meant. “I can see now why it incensed you terribly to see me bear it. It is an honor I most assuredly do not deserve.” Then finally, he looked at her, reluctant. “I’ve never seen you in such a rage—not just at me, but at anyone. Not even Alexius. I hope not to again.”

“Then don't do anything to earn it,” she chided, but her tone was playful. “I tell you this… because I am going to say something next. And I want it to be clear that I say this not to hurt you, but to help you.”

He gave her his most sober look, nodded. 

Thanduwen took a deep breath. “Cullen, what the Chantry did to you was …unspeakably cruel. Crueler, at least, than what the abominations did, because this was a decision made my people possessed of their wits, who should have known better.” He opened his mouth as though he were going to protest; she lifted her hand to silence him. “I can't imagine what that tower looked like when you finally walked out of it, or how you must have felt to go free when so many had perished. But no matter what you wanted, or said you wanted, they should never have sent you to Kirkwall. Instead of trying to help you they used you. And I will not do that,” she said, holding his eyes and shaking her head. “I will not be like them.”

“But I will not be able to give it my all, my best—”

“Well, we will have to agree to disagree on that point. Because I think this is you at your best.” Despite herself, she reached out, ran her hand along his arm. “It’s not effortless. It’s not easy. But I see you now after many weeks and see that you are trying to be better. Be different. You were right—you are not the man you were in Kirkwall. You are far better than that man. Do not throw that work away.” A small smile. “Even Fiona is impressed with you, a little.”

He scoffed. “Don’t be cruel, Inquisitor.”

Her voice was small, wounded: “I’m not.”

Her eyes looked to the wooden case on the table. She wanted to do something more, extract promises from him, or leave the tent with the lyrium in hand. But she did not want to treat him like a child. This time, she did not wish to humiliate him.

There was a potion stand, not far from his tent. The preparation would not take long… she turned to him, a small smile on her lips. “I can give you something, to stop the nightmares. To give you a dreamless sleep. Would that help? Will you let me do that for you?”

He looked at her, something shimmering in his gaze, but then he tore his eyes away. As if the promise of a dreamless sleep was more than he deserved; as if he had resigned himself to be haunted, hunted by his sins until there was nothing left of him but regret. “It is already so late… and you must rise with the sun tomorrow….”

“It wont’t take long,” she reassured him, placing her hand over his. It had ceased its trembling. It was cool to the touch—no longer slick with sweat. “Please, Cullen. Let me do this for you.”

After one last look—the vestige of self-loathing—he relented. Consented. “Alright.”  

 

She had prepared the potion for Cullen; she had delivered it to his doorstep. And he had looked at her with such gratitude and worship. For a moment they had stood in an uncomfortable silence, before Thanduwen had clasped him firmly on the shoulder—a gesture she had hoped would reassure him, but not encourage further intimacies in the future—and then excused herself, returning to the heart of the Keep to where her tent was pitched.

So drained was she from her encounter with Cullen that she had forgotten her altercation with Solas that morning. But when she parted the flaps to her tent’s entrance and found him within, reading by the candlelight, she remembered. Struck, even so, through the anger, by the beauty of him sitting there. 

By the stiffness of his posture she could tell he was uneasy, as unsure as she was where their argument had left them. Still, here he was. And his face betrayed a concern that had nothing to do with their argument. “It is late. Is something the wrong?”

“No,” she said, quickly, unclasping her cloak and folding it. “Yes. It’s alright now.”

She could feel his eyes on her as she began to unbutton the formal wear Josephine had sent her, draped the velvet over the back of a chair in the corner of her tent. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Not really.”

It was not that she didn’t _want_ to. Still she could feel the remains of her meeting with Cullen, her mind frenzied with such raw emotion: rage, pity, horror, _rage._ But Cullen’s story was only Cullen’s to tell, and there was surely (understandably) no special love between him and Solas. She felt she owed Cullen his privacy.

But she and Solas spoke of so many things—nearly everything. She could feel more than see him shifting uncomfortably behind her as she got undressed. Perhaps he had taken her refusal—unexplained—as a sign that she was still sore about their disagreement.

“Vhen’an. I am sorry for how we spoke this morning. We are on the edge of great violence. I should have held my tongue, even after you encouraged me to speak my mind.”

“It’s alright. I’m not mad. Not anymore.” She turned around to face him, sat beside him on the bedroll. “And anyway, you were right.”

“I was?” he asked, clearly taken aback.

She could hardly look at him as she told him the news. “Fiona brought word from Wycome. Despite everything I have done to keep them out of harm’s way, my Clan is in danger, again. Not just them but the alienage elves as well.” She felt something heavy and thick settle in her throat. “Our diplomat says the nobles are talking about…” but then her voice faltered, broke. Solas reached out for her, his hand on her shoulder as she shook her head. “…They say they will leave none alive.”

He placed his hand over hers, tentative, but then sure when his fingers closed over hers. “ _Ir ame abelas, vhen’an._ I regretted my words before this news, but doubly so now. If we were not on the other side of the world….” He let the sentence hang, then shook his own head, dismissing the thought. “What can I do?”

“Nothing.” Then looking up at him, “Tell me I made the right choice.” Even if he could not do it honestly, not knowing (in full) what she had committed to do.

But he knew that it did not matter. He moved closer to her, held her face between his hands. She felt the warmth of his palms on her cheeks. “Vhen’an,” he began, holding her eyes. “You are not to blame for the violence these nobles wish on your Clan. You are not to blame for what may happen if they act on those wishes. I know you, and I love you, and I know you have made the best choice. To whatever end, I am certain your course is wisest.”

So impossibly grateful. What had she done to earn such faith, such affection? This warm safe place to retreat to, to lay her head. “ _Thank you_.” She raised his hand to her lips, pressed a kiss to his palm, felt the lines of it beneath her lips. Sun-line. Summer-line. _Fate._  

Thanduwen measured him with her eyes before she raised her head again, taking his hand between hers. “Do you want to know what I saw? When the others looked at me. Clan Lindiran.”

Solas nodded, a singular and slow gesture.

“I saw terror. Hidden on their features, but… inescapable. You are right. We have never been safe. But for many years now, we have been, for the most part, ignored. They know that time is ending.” She bit her lip, worried it between her teeth. “I am the Herald of Andraste only until I they decide I am not. The minute I make a mistake the Andrastians will only see me as a Dalish elf— a barbarian of the wilds—and all of them will be held accountable for my mistakes. They know that with one false step I could lead them all to ruin. It is… terrifying.”

Solas tilted his head to the side, measuring her. “Are you not often terrified? Of the Chantry? Of Corypheus? But you do not let this fear hold you, control you. You do not let it rule you. Why is this fear any different?” He pushed her hair out of her face, leaned forward to press a soft kiss in the center of her brow. His words were warm against her forehead: “Whatever I may think of the Dalish, I do not think they are bound by terror, by fear. They are stronger than that. As are you.”

She loved him, though perhaps she shouldn’t, this man who thought he saw everything so clearly. What had he said this morning? Of how Clan Lindiran had looked at her…?

“Tell me what it is you think they saw in me.”

He withdrew to look at her, met her eyes, a small smile curling in the corners of his mouth. “Are you sure you want to know?”

She nodded.

He took a deep breath. “I think… they saw you as I see you. They look at you and see the most powerful elf in Ages beyond counting. As someone they could believe in, someone they would follow, even unto death, if it meant a chance at freedom.” 

He brought his five fingers together, then slowly, softly, opened his hand. In his palm unfolded a vibrant flower, star-yellow and glowing faintly in the dim of the tent. “I see you holding the fate of the continent in your hand as though it were a precious and fragile thing. So reluctant to use the power that has been thrust upon you, afraid of abusing it. But you are just, and fair, and wise, and gentle.” As the petals unfurled, he plucked it and tucked it behind her ear, curling a strand of dark hair out of her face. “And perhaps the world has been waiting for a your voice for a long time.”

“I see you... and I love you so deeply. And with your wisdom and strength I see a future beyond the Inquisition. A future in which we change the world irrevocably. In which it is safe for Elvhen. We would remake the world anew until it was so brilliant that this world would seem only a passing nightmare. Banished by the dawn.”

His hands released her. He sat on his ankles, knees bent, hands folded in his lap as he watched her for a reaction, giving her space to think. (To dream.)

And she thought of Cullen. Even in power, the world had battered him. The suffering of the Templars, some raised and weaned onto lyrium since they were small, still children. The charnel house of the Chantry. She thought of her Clan risking what little safety she had bought for them to defend the elves of the Alienage against conspiracy and slaughter. Of Mihris, clanless and wandering until fate brought them together. Dirthavaren. All the darkness in the world, multiplied and deepened the more she saw of it until it was deep blue, deep blue, black. Stained.

 _I would have you recognize your strength,_ he had told her, and she was strong. She knew this. Her strength was in the small acts. Returning the bodies to Sister Vaughn in Crestwood. Gathering letters off of corpses for the families of deceased Orlesians. Small lights in the darkness. 

But with Solas, she could blaze like the sun.

She leaned forward, captured his lips with her own. He drew her body closer to his, held her fast in his arms even as she pulled away to whisper, “I want that, too.”

Solas pulled away from her, far enough that he could look at her face clearly, his head turned slightly to the side. He fixed his eyes upon hers. When he spoke, there was a trepidation in his tone, and something else. Well-hidden. Excitement? Hope? “Do you?”

He was looking at her as though she were the most bewitching thing he had ever seen: full of desire and caution both. But how could he doubt her? She would put a swift end to his uncertainty. She wanted him—this—revolution. More than anything she wanted him at her side as she led it.

She was tired of being a good prophet. _No more_.

Gently, Thanduwen removed his hands from her face. Then, casting her thighs on either side of his waist, she climbed into his lap. Not once did he take his eyes off of her. When she had settled, comfortably straddling his hips, she raised her hand to his face, traced his lips with her fingertips; his breath caught in his throat. Her eyes followed her fingers as they traced along his jaw, down along the alabaster column of his throat. She could feel the beat of his heart in his neck. It was racing.

Her eyes met his. She spoke in a whisper. “We will burn this world to the ground so that something new and green can grow from the ashes.” She swallowed, caressed the crown of his head. “We will begin with Adamant Fortress.”

Solas watched her, open-mouthed. For one breath, he was silent; beneath her fingers she could feel the bones of his collar rise and fall with it. Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, his thumb brushing the skin in front of her ear as he pulled her down into a greedy kiss. He pressed her body to his as he tasted her. And Thanduwen knew at once by the intensity of the kiss alone that he was going to make love to her again tonight, without a care for Rylen’s men that were still walking their nightly rounds just outside their tent.

They undressed quietly. Solas lay her down on her back, freed her of her trousers. His fingers stroked her through her smalls, already damp; he planted a path of fervent kisses across her stomach as he lowered himself between her legs.

“Thanduwen.” He moaned her name against her skin. “We will reorder the very stars.”

 

_“I have no desire to wage war upon the Grey Wardens—the Inquisition stands for peace, and balance, and long has the Grey Warden Order stood as defenders of peace. But they have become embroiled in a vast and ruthless conspiracy, and have become puppets of Corypheus himself: he who destroyed the Temple of Sacred Ashes, he who leveled Haven to the ground, he who murdered her Most Holy Divine Justinia.”_

They rose at dawn. She did not linger in his arms. There was nothing left to say. She pulled the velvet regalia over her shoulders. She fixed her face into a look of confident determination. On her way to the makeshift stables where they corralled the harts, she met Cullen. Already buckled into his armor. Sober. The shadows under his eyes lessened, well rested. He inclined his head to her. 

They did not speak. There was nothing to say. Her hart had been readied. She put a booted foot into the stirrups, swung her leg over the saddle. The crushed black of her fennec fur cloak danced behind her.

_“_ _Though the Wardens may not know it, they have become a force for corruption and evil of the most vile kind. Clandestinely, recklessly, the Grey Wardens have sought to raise an unholy army. Convinced by the poisoned tongues of fanatics within their ranks, they have spilled the blood of their brothers to tear the Veil and mount a legion of demons, the likes of which the world has never before seen. And until we tear down Adamant’s walls, we will not know to what degree they have already succeeded in this wicked aim.”_

When she rode past the gate the soldiers were already mustered; she rode before their ranks and spoke words she did not wholly believe. Though her voice was amplified by magic the desert swallowed the sound. There was little fear in the eyes of her soldiers, only a grim kind of resignation. Committed. 

They left the Keep and headed north. The mages draped a veil of sand about their ranks. Thanduwen lowered the Serrault goggles in front of her eyes, and watched behind the polished glass as the mages’ barriers bubbled and swelled, lifting the golden dust about them in a tumult. They followed a compass bearing north; they could barely see through the dust. Solas rode at her side. They did not speak.

_“_ _But we are the Inquisition! We are the defenders of Thedas. As long as I stand as Inquisitor we will never submit to fear, nor to the cruelty and blasphemy of heretics and pretender-gods. And we will not permit this provocation to go unanswered.”_

The Wardens behind Adamant’s gates were red-eyed, outraged; the initial blast of sand as the mages dispelled their barrier had nearly blinded many of them. They coughed. They choked on the fine sediment that still whirled about the fortress in a flurry, a fury. And when the Inquisition’s might was revealed in its full strength, many of the Wardens who were still possessed of their wits yielded to them. Less blood spilt. 

Fire, and ash. More than she remembered at Haven. The feel of it in her mouth, her throat. Ash and sand. When she says, “ _our grievance is not with the Wardens_ ,” and tries to get them to lay down their weapons, she cannot stop her voice from sounding parse and gruff. As coarse as the dust. 

The Veil already torn and some menace lurking behind it, more threatening even than the demon of pride that the Wardens pulled through. Even that slain, easily. And then racing along the ramparts. Dodging the corrupted breath of the rotten beast that wheeled over head until she had reached Adamant’s pinnacle, Clarel, standing over Erimond in a fury, before her, Solas and Hawke and Blackwall and Alistair and Cole at her side.

_“_ _We will teach the world what it means to defy the Inquisition. We will crash upon Adamant like a storm, and we will demonstrate indisputably that none can stand against the will of Herald of Andraste as she guards the free peoples of Thedas against the gravest of perils. We will stand and we will fight, and this army that would serve Corypheus will never tread beyond Adamant’s walls. Instead they will fall beneath the might of our blades, and the speed of our arrows, and the strength of our magic. And when we are granted Victory, as we surely will be, we will know that our path is righteous.”_

Adamant, too old and too expensive for the Wardens to return to until now, and not so well reinforced that the ground did not buckle beneath the weight of the dragon as it crashed upon the main bailey. Buckling, tumbling. Falling out from beneath Alistair who scrambled, grabbed at the fortress as it crumbled out beneath him, and she turned to reach him, to pull him up, and Solas followed her… tumbling, buckling… the ground giving way beneath them—swallowing—and then the Abyssal Reach swallowed them as it had always wished to, for it had hungered for them since they had come here, called to them, they had tempted it when they made love on the lip of it—

_“_ _Know then, as we set out on this final march, that we go to war not with the Wardens, but against the threats of tyranny, betrayal and despair. Though the Order may have fallen into darkness, we will free them from the lies that shackle them to Corypheus and restore them to their rightful place in the Light. Long have the Wardens stood as our guardians against the Blight; it is now our sacred duty to protect them against their own destruction. We will save the Wardens from themselves—and may the Maker have mercy on their souls.”_

And as she fell the air tore at her robes, her velvet, the golden braids of military rank: none of these symbols of power would save her now. Empty. And the chasm stretched deeper and she knew no barrier would break their fall. He had said to her, _we will reorder the very stars_ , but there were no stars below them: no light, only darkness, and death.

 _No, no_ , she thought, refused. _It will not consume him. It will not consume us. Not now._

[ _Not yet._ ] 

She could feel it—that snag, that weakness. Like knowing whether to tear fabric along its warp or weft. And with a basso rumbling sound her hand crackled. Ripped through the Veil, greenlight, wrenching them into darkness….

 

 

 

When she opened her eyes, she was elsewhere—lying on her back, staring up at a high ceiling decorated with the most exquisite embellishments. Dark woods and deeply pigmented paint. A ceiling decorated in stories, though the characters and acts depicted were strange to her, full of serpents and bloodshed. 

Her head lay in a puddle of some damp, warm liquid. She idly wondered if it was her own blood. But then, she supposed, it couldn’t be; if she had lost such a volume of blood she would feel far more faint.

“Hello?"

Above her appeared a face she had not seen before: that of an elf woman with closed cropped hair and wide, expressive eyes. She bore no vallaslin upon her face, but she regarded Thanduwen as though she knew her, and smiled when she greeted her with her name:

“Hello, Thanduwen of the Dales.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I promised this update like, a week after the last one and now its December. I am sorry for the delay. Life kind of... swept me up, and it has been very hard to focus on fandom/writing the last few weeks. Job stuff snatched me, got me down. :/
> 
> But today I put on my Big Girl Boots and finished this chapter because, wow, it is embarrassing that it took so long (it was nearly done.) I'm hoping to squeak out another update before the New Year, and then (hopefully, if nothing changes) I'll be able to return to a schedule of an update every 2-3 weeks. (I am hoping if I put it in writing I'll be able to hold myself to it.)
> 
> Happy holidays to those who are celebrating! Thank you deeply for your patience and continued readership.


	20. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See her, even now, even in the retelling: so indecisive. Did she make the right choices? Was her love folly? But she cannot be. Indecisive. Cannot still be trapped by such questions. There is no room here for illusions, self-deceptions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short interlude. Please see the notes at the end.
> 
> TW: brief depiction of drowning.

When she opened her eyes, she was elsewhere, lying on her back, staring up at a high ceiling decorated and embellished to the point of excess. Beams of rich, dark wood framed frescoes and mosaics, glittering with color. Pigments formed panels, pictures of many-headed serpents and copious bloodshed and war, though whether the stories within were fable or fact, Thanduwen could not say.

The bright red of the bloodshed: her head lay in a puddle of some damp, warm liquid, and she idly wondered if it was her own blood. It would not be the first time she awoke thusly. But then, she supposed, that couldn’t be; if she had lost such a volume of blood as the liquid which now cradled her head in its buoyant warmth, she would feel far more faint.  

“Hello?”

Above her appeared a face she had not seen before: that of an elf woman with closed cropped hair and wide, expressive eyes. She bore no vallaslin upon her face, but she regarded Thanduwen as though she knew her, and smiled when she greeted her by name:

“Hello, Thanduwen of the Dales.” 

 

By now perhaps she ought to have been less surprised by all these strangers speaking to her with such familiarity, and the woman whose face floated above her was surely a stranger. Such a striking set of features; if Thanduwen had ever encountered her before, she was sure she would recall it. But the longer she looked upon her the more she felt as though this woman _should_ have been known to her. Her features brought no recollection to mind but there was something in the tone of her voice, a certain resonance that tickled the depths of Thanduwen’s consciousness. As embarrassed as she was to have to ask (Josephine had always taught her it was best not to voice such questions, if it could be avoided) she could not help herself:

“Do I know you?”

The skin around the elf woman’s eyes crinkled in mild amusement. Thanduwen felt her hands on either side of her face, cupping her jaw, callused thumbs smoothing over the skin just in front of her ear. “Not yet,” she replied. “We may come to know one another much better, Inquisitor. I am called Harea by my people. For now, my name will have to be sufficient introduction, however paltry a thing it may come to seem in time.”

 _Harea._ The name was as unfamiliar as the face. Thanduwen wanted to ask where she was, how she had come to such a place, how Harea had found her there, but before she could, Harea’s warm brown face retreated from view above her, leaving her once more with an unobstructed view of the frescoes on the ceiling. Her hands slid upwards along Thanduwen’s jaw, and ran through her hair, massaging along her scalp. And though she wanted to resist the comfort of that touch, Thanduwen felt her whole body relax, easing into the chair beneath her as her gaze swept idly across the artwork on the ceiling. Her attention was drawn to one panel in particular: a hunter in the heat of his game.

Thanduwen could tell by his robes and by the staff he bore that he was a mage. Though flanked on both sides by strange and menacing serpents, he looked unperturbed, not so much brave as defiant in the face of such danger. His robes swept behind him dramatically, caught in a fierce wind as the serpents breathed a blue fire down upon him. His forefinger was pointed at one of them in a gesture of condemnation, and from his hand sprung a fountain of red, crackling lightning. < _It sparkled magnificently in the slanted morning light that always filled the room. Crushed drakestone had been set in the plaster-paint, and so this display of the power (of a man long dead) and dominance (greatly exaggerated) always glittered fiercely at the faintest hint of light._ > The spell had struck one of the serpents squarely between its wings, and the creature was tumbling downwards out of the sky, limbs frantic and grasping for purchase in vain—

“I fell.”

The words sprung from her lips unbidden, a sudden realization. And the serpent, and red, and—And the lyrium dragon had come at Erimond’s command, but done little beyond weaken the structure below them. Adamant after all had been long unused by the Wardens, the cost of the repairs to make it serviceable impossible to justify. It had sat for many long years abandoned. (Should have heeded Fiona’s words better when she spoke of such weaknesses.) She remembered turning back for Alistair, and the ground buckling, masonry rippling like the perturbed surface of a pond, then giving way beneath them—the impenetrable darkness that had swallowed them—and the portal she had torn open, which had led them—

“Into the Nightmare,” Harea said, completing her thought for her without pausing her ministrations. Thanduwen could hear the water in the basin below her head chiming pleasantly as Harea’s hands swept a comb through her hair.

“Am I dreaming?” Thanduwen asked. She swallowed the last word: _again?_ Thinking of the Storm Coast, and the Rush of Sighs [ _of the waterfall in Crestwood_ ] and she swore, raised her hands to her face, the surest way to tell—would the anchor remain? and the limb? would—

Thanduwen sat upright so abruptly the comb caught in her hair mid-sweep, yanking her head violently backwards towards the basin before Harea released it. Mouth agape in shock < _and no small degree of horror_ > she examined herself. Two hands, yes, raised before her. Two whole hands without glowing green seam—a proper pair. But something verynotright about them. She turned the wrists experimentally, to be sure they were hers, attached to her and under her command and not some trick, and, yes—a wiggle of the fingers, and she gasped. 

< _Was minding my own when the change came: when Magister Cassius ceased to be himself and became someone else. I knew he was no longer the Magister the moment it occurred, as I had attended to this man for half of my life, having been purchased by his household when I was a mere adolescent. In place of the fat, fearful and vain man whose hair I attended for its daily soaking (in the gold laced poreclain bath, enchanted to always hold its contents at a precise warmth: a solution of one part sagesoap and two parts rosewater) in the room where he liked to gaze upon the familial frescoes that depicted the great acts of his ancestors, endeavoring always to become just as “great” as them (here, read “great” as: unforgiving, ambitious, greedy, insatiable, and odious in almost every way) but instead of that man there was a new and curious and (increasingly) bewildered creature, surprised, perhaps, to find their mind trapped in the flesh of an other. And I knew as I watched this newcomer observe their surroundings that it was the Dalish child (for whom else could it have been, intruding upon my old life?) and I made a small prayer to Mythal for leading her to me (now, in the aftertimes, looking back on things, such a prayer being made more out of habit than genuine faith, for my faith had long past been eroded by the Truth that became known to me later) and held her face, gently. >_

Confusion swept over Thanduwen. For this much was unmistakable: there was no way that months or even years had made these hands her own. They were thick, with fat, olive-skinned fingers. Coarse black hairs sprung from the knuckles, and the nails were so well-manicured they were filed to a perfect curve and buffed to a shine. But more than any of this she knew they could not be her hands because they bore no scars nor calluses, the skin baby-soft, as though they had never felt the pain of a wound or a day’s hard work. 

Thanduwen felt a scream rising in the back of her throat, but Harea’s hand came down upon her shoulder and she stilled beneath the touch, mind racing to understand. This woman had addressed her by name, by title. This woman _knew_ her. Whatever was happening, she….

Thanduwen turned to face her, wet hair whipping wildly about her face with the motion. Harea looked upon her with sympathy. “You are dreaming,” she said, slowly, “but you are no longer in a dream of your own.”

“How…?”

In response, Harea only shrugged. 

“This part never made much sense to me, even when I lived it. Even so, this circumstance is… unusual. It is likely that the memory of your fall so distressed you that you shattered the dream and, unable to wake, found yourself here. It is unexpected, but—” here she was cut off by some brief cacophony in the hall, her eyes drawn to the door and a distant noises behind it. A smile played about her lips before she turned her gaze back to Thanduwen. “I believe it will right itself soon.”

“Why?”

“Well, there’s little use in you being here, isn’t there?” Harea said, wrinkling her nose. But then something twinkled in her eye, a mischief Thanduwen was not entirely sure she liked. Her posture straightened.

< _She is a wayward thing and more fragile than I was than when the change came over me. My brother and I had no choice but to be strong always, hardened against the cruelties that we endured constantly, as a slave must be if she wants not to lose herself. And I knew not how the Dalish child landed before me (for none of us, even with such intimacy between us, can always untangle the caprices of purpose) but still I was glad she did; the child needed to be_ fortified _. More so than the others had prepared her (some had not prepared her at all, woefully negligent of this responsibility.) >_

“Then again,” Harea said, slowly, “while you are here, perhaps you will… indulge me. I am _so_ curious. The others, they will not let me spoil the ending, but we are alone, now. They cannot stop me.”

Harea crooked a finger, beckoning Thanduwen closer. She began to wave her hands over the basin. As the ceiling, so too was the washbasin absurdly decorated. Beneath the still surface of the water Thanduwen could see intricate veins of patterned gold. Glazed blossoms of every color and shape crowded the bottom of the basin so that the white of the porcelain was barely visible between them. A little notch in the front had cradled Thanduwen’s neck. It was meant for hair washing, she realized; the silly sort of thing that only someone with servants at their disposal would have use for. Thanduwen sensed no magical properties about it, beyond the faint whiff of a spell that might have kept the water warm within.

And yet as Harea’s hands passed over the surface of the water, it began to transform. The glazed blossoms retreated; the shadows of the frescoes above was no longer reflected faintly on the water’s surface. The water had turned stormy. And though she knew the basin to only be a few inches deep, now it appeared as if she were looking down a tremendous well of fathomless depths. Dark billows of grey sediment churned restlessly along this interminable, liquid corridor.

Then scried from that vast and murky nebula were veins of color: gold, then amber. Templar-red.

“Why did you spare the shemlen?” Harea asked, waving her hand slowly over the basin. But as Cullen’s face coalesced in the basin, Thanduwen recoiled. 

< _To see such revulsion on Master Cassius’ face was not, I am sorry to say, a novel experience. There were many things the man found revolting: many of his slaves, elves (in general), Ferelden, bean sprouts (and most other healthful foods), lose hairs, stained linens, women he considered to be unseemly. But the way he looked with the girl within him was different. I do not think she was disgusted with the vision so much as she was distressed at the feelings or memories it evoked within her. The way her upper lip twitched. Flinched. Posturing curling inward on herself as if she could make herself smaller, as though she could disappear. >_

The gesture did not escape Harea’s notice. Her eyes were sharp, measuring; Thanduwen could not shake the notion she was being tested. She forced her gaze back to the basin… and there he was again: lying supine in his bed, on the afternoon she’d stormed into his tower unannounced to find him lying there, dark circles under his eyes, skin damp with sweat. “Surely it was not because of an omen,” Harea goaded. “A _necklace._ ”

“I did not spare him,” Thanduwen was quick to retort. “I sent him to be judged. His punishment was postponed while he carried out this other duty, but not, he was not… not absolved. Not by me, not then.”

< _See her, even now, even in the retelling: so indecisive. Did she make the right choices? Was her love folly? But she cannot be. Indecisive. Cannot still be trapped by such questions. There is no room here for illusions, self-deceptions, and that is why I asked after that Commander fellow. That golden haired human slightly off-center of everything in the story, but he did not get there on his own, no;_ She _put him there. Whether or not she will acknowledge. Whether or not she understands why._

_That lie cannot linger. She will come to a crossroads: she can either cling to the myth she has already created for herself, clothed herself in (the warmth of those familiar archetypes and fables) and perish draped in it, fashioning those dear illusions into a death shroud. Or, like the rest of us, she can shed it. Cast it all away. After all, the vessel must be emptied before it can be filled with something new: bright and clear, freshwater where once there was naught but stagnation and rot. I do not know if she is strong enough. >_

[ _She is strong enough.]_

< _If you say so. Only time will tell. But you cannot begrudge me this opportunity to try fortify her for that final trial—she is not far from it, now. And we have already lost so many._ >

Harea looked unmoved by such a retort, and equally unconvinced. “I have seen your heart, Daughter of Soufei. I am intimately aware of the darkness within it. And so I know how badly you wanted his head: on a pike, as a warning, a proclamation.” She tilted her head to the side, looked at Thanduwen with an expression of mixed pity and curiosity. “Not that you _should_ have slain him. Or that you were right not to slay him. That is not for me to judge. But the _why_ of the thing is very important, and I do not think you know why yourself.” And then she heaved a sigh, passed her hand over the surface of the water: and there they were, no longer Cullen alone but Cullen at her side, walking the streets of Halamshiral after dark, both of them so full and tipsy they had to walk at a slower pace, still smelling of woodsmoke—

“Deshanna—wanted me to,” Thanduwen said, quietly, stubbornly. Hardly able to look at that image in the basin now, the ghost city, the occupied city after dark. Child-like in her insistence that the decision had nothing to do with her, that it was one made entirely of circumstance; that _she_ had nothing to do with him at her side, full and drunk and unsteady on his feet, and— “She sent the pendant as a sign, for me.”

Harea scoffed. “Your Keeper? What did she know about it, so far away as she was? You saw it as a sign because you wanted to, and to say otherwise is to put more faith in superstition than you really have. It is a convenient excuse for the choice you made. You are lying to me.” Then she reached out, gently, running her hands through Thanduwen’s still dripping hair. “I do not think you know it yourself, but you are telling falsehoods. And you should know, Daughter of the Dales, that to do so here is _very_ dangerous.”

Thanduwen began to weep. It was a strange feeling, to feel gripped by sadness in this body that was not her own; the tightness in the too-broad chest, double-chin wobbling with each tremble of her lips. But she could not help it. Not now. Having failed Harea’s test (for it was clear to her by Harea’s words she _had_ failed) she knew what must come next, inevitably: she would be cast back into that _other_ place, into her own memory. And though Harea was far from kind (skeptical, analytic, not kind) she still preferred her company to the idea of being cast back into her old self. She did not want to go back. She had lived through it once; she knew what was coming.

“What is happening to me?” she asked, more to herself than Harea, whispered under her breath as she trembled.

Harea looked at her without sympathy, but a hardness. A certainty. “Nothing that you cannot endure.” But if Harea believed that, she had more faith in Thanduwen than Thanduwen did in herself.

“You are going to send me back. To Adamant, to…” but her voice trailed off, those things that must come next, in sequence, as time is (most often) one directional and does not suffer repeats, the linear progression of her distant past < _Not so distant, the way she clings to it, keeps it close and present. Refuses to abandon it where it belongs, past, passed._ > but that she could not even bear to name. “Please, don’t. I know what is coming. I don’t want to see it—I can’t relive it. I don’t think—I fear I will not be strong enough a second time. Please.”

“I cannot,” Harea said, and for the first time, looking at her with genuine pity. “Not yet.”

“I am too weak,” she mumbled, self-pitying, frightened. 

< _Now she resembled my Master more closely; or at least, the expression she wore looked more at home on his face. But unlike him she might do something yet to change her sorry fate._

 _I laughed. “Weak? Too weak to weather danger?” Then I reached out and touched her again. Could not stop touching her. She seemed such a child. I never had a child. Never wanted one until—and then, well. “You have been in danger since the beginning. I do not think you could go on without it. You would be like a fish out of water, gasping, suffocated, if you were ever truly safe. Unsure what to do with yourself. Wandering, listless, like you were before we found you.”_ >

“I don’t wan’t to go back,” Thanduwen said, voice cracked; defiance breaking down into despair. “I know what is coming.” 

“I know, _ma lin_ ,” Harea said, squeezing her shoulder warmly. “But you must.”

They were interrupted once more by the commotion in the hall; now, in addition to the clattering, Thanduwen could hear shouting, screams. There was a loud bang—some kind of explosion, magical perhaps—shouting, a cheer.

Harea turned to her again, her eyes sad. “Please know that I take no pleasure in what happens next. But this is how it must end. How it always ends.”

At that precise moment the door flew open, revealing another slave in the passageway. He shouted into the room.

“Harea! Now!”

Once-tender hands seized the hair at the back of her head, dragging her forward and down. When her face met the water in the basin it was no longer warm but bitterly cold, stinging her face as she fought against her assailant. But Harea was stronger, her fist kept Thanduwen’s face beneath the surface of the water, holding the once-body of Magister Cassius in place until the thrashing weakened, then stilled, arms hanging limply at sides.

< _Until we meet again, Daughter of Soufei._ >

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! A bit of a short chapter this update, for two reasons:
> 
> Firstly, it has been so long since the last one, for which I am sorry. I fell into a bit of a depressive slump around the holidays, and it made it difficult to focus on my writing. PLEASE know that each of you who left a comment or a kudos were like stars in that darkness to me. It's corny, but it's true. I was feeling a bit low about my writing and every time I got another AO3 notification in my inbox it pulled me closer back.
> 
> Secondly... because the next one is massive. Longer than most. I'm *mostly* done with the first draft, but editing it is going to be a bit of a nightmare. So I thought I would post this bit separately and then focus on the next chunk.
> 
> Thank you to each of you who have stuck with me despite my kind of erratic update schedule. One of my goals for this year is to write with more regularity—by the end of February, I'm hoping to be able to hit two chapters a month. (We'll see if I succeed or not... then again, with no DA4 news on the horizon, I am committed to sticking with and finishing this piece, though that will involve many more updates, I think.)
> 
> Happy New Year!


	21. Victory March

Colors leeched out into blackness; darkness enveloped her. And then the darkness was a shield, a blessing: against the skull-splitting intensity of that blistering _green_ , so much pain that the blackness settling over her vision seemed a mercy… and dry, sure fingers pushing lank sweat-soaked hair out of her forehead. 

“ _I will save everyone_ ,” whispered to her temple as she collapsed against him, unable to keep herself straight from the pain in her dying limb. “ _I will bring every one of us home._ ”   
  
But in the darkness of her mind (so overcome with the sheer agony she was nearly senseless) she saw quite suddenly her brother’s face: battered and bludgeoned, screaming at her, condemning her. “ _You will be the death of us! Harellan! Harellan!_ ” And, “ _No_ ,” she said, loud enough for Solas to hear even over the groaning and hissing of the anchor, “ _No, you won’t_.”

 

 

[ _a glitch; a slip—a reset. we are not There yet._ ]

< _And where were we, then, when you lost track of her?_ >

{ _At the castle, at the gatehouse; for great deeds and victories must be followed by great celebration._ }

[ _Ah yes. Here she comes, now, right wherewhen she belongs._ ]

 

 

Thanduwen found the dress—which, she had been assured, was made of the lightest, most breathable of silks—to be uncomfortable. Yes, it flowed and rippled beautifully around her knees and legs, but it was cinched tightly across her abdomen, to accentuate her waist. That alone was unbearable enough, but Josephine had insisted she at least _attempt_ to wear a corset.   
  
As Josephine had tugged the strings in the back of the bodice, the boning clenching tighter and tighter around her waist, Thanduwen had given Josephine a look of horror over her shoulder.

“You wear this _every day_?”

There had been a scuffle, a riot, and any hopes Josephine had of getting the Inquisitor into a corset had been dashed to bits.

Now, corset-less, she was only marginally less uncomfortable as she stood in one of the ancillary rooms at the gate house, to the side of the great portcullis. She was in the company of Fiona (who, as a former Grey Warden herself, would lead the procession) and Cullen, who would have the honor of marching at her side.

Beyond the portcullis, stretching across the great bridge, all the way to the barbican and along the stairs that lined the lift to the mountain’s feet, all the Inquisition’s soldiers and mages stood in perfect rank, waiting for the procession to begin. Thanduwen imagined one of Josephine’s many assistants—trained bards and diplomats in their own right—fussing along the their lines, correcting posture, chastising those whose uniforms were not flawlessly pressed, correcting the drape of braids of rank. Everything for the Victory March had to be perfect.

So much order— _too much_ order. The Siege had been anything but orderly. To celebrate it with such great organization seemed, to her, a farce.

Since yesterday, her only consolation—the one thing that had eased her anxiety about all this display of circumstance and pomp—was that she would, in her own small way, through conspiracy with Marco, disrupt all of the Ambassador’s carefully laid plans. 

(It was not Josephine she wished to spite, she reasoned, and this was true; it was just that as long as they had made her Inquisitor, she wanted to do things _her_ way. She was insistent. She would not be the Chantry’s figurehead any more than she would be the perfect pretend-noble they all wished she would be for the sake of appearances, to prove she was not as ‘ _uncivilized_ ’ as her woodland kin. In truth, she knew no amount of fine dresses and imperious posture would convince them that she was every bit the person they were, deserving of respect and dignity. So why bother? There was a power, she felt, in defying the expectation that she would even try.)

Earlier, Marco had caught her staring as she roamed the campgrounds after her final dress fitting. She had hoped the stroll (which would take her along the newly erected and winding paths among the entertainer’s encampments, delightfully disorganized, unlike the straight lines between the tents of her soldiers) would take her mind off the frustrations of the meeting with the tailor and inspire in her (she hoped) some excitement for the March and the subsequent festivities. Instead, she had found him—Marco, a handsome dancer from Rivain—and as they chatted (as he flirted, idly, despite knowing full well who she was, demonstrating a boldness she could not help but admire) the chatting had gradually turned to mischief, and scheming, and the hatching of a plan.

 

 

But for now, she was not thinking about Marco, or her mischief; all she could think about was how impractical a white gown was. Fiona looked on with an amused smile as Thanduwen gathered the hem of her skirt into her hands, lifting it off the floor of the gatehouse. It had, in all likelihood, never been swept in here—or at least, not since the initial round of repairs and tidying since they Inquisition had made the castle its home. On second thought, as she looked at the coat of grime on the floor (ages of caked pigeon droppings at mud that had covered the floor in a thick, hard crust) it seemed more likely that it had never have been tidied to begin with. 

Thanduwen huffed at the impracticality of it all. If she had been wearing boots, she wouldn’t have noticed the dirt at all. As she attempted to manage the hem of her dress, her floral coronet (laurel for victory, white lily for grace) drooped over her face, settled over her eyes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so uncomfortable,” Cullen mused, walking over to her, “and that’s including a certain afternoon in my tower. May I?” he asked, reaching his fingers towards her hair.

“Please,” Thanduwen begged, and Cullen acquiesced; he adjusted the band of flowers around her head, tucked the midnight hairs that had escaped from her carefully styled coif back where they belonged. “What nonsense this is. I’ve never felt so overdressed in my life. It is a military parade, isn’t it? Why couldn’t I have worn a uniform like you?” 

She had been fitted for a military uniform in Cullen’s style at the same time that the final adjustments had been made to her dress. Much to Josephine’s consternation, however, she had insisted that her uniform be cut in _black_ ; black and gold, it was decided, in collaboration with the tailor, with a lovely cape of pitch black velvet, foil-stamped with the Torch Tree of Elvhenan. The palette of Cullen’s uniform matched the Chantry colors: red and blue, the very same that Josephine had ordered for the rest of the Inquisition, though his was decorated with various medals and stars of rank. She had taken umbrage with the color choice earlier, but here, in the gatehouse, she would have given anything for sturdy boots and a pair of trousers, even if it was that awful Chantry red.

“Why do you think?” Cullen practically drawled. Once the siege had been behind them (Cullen, sober, performed admirably; his leadership at Adamant was the reason for one of his many medals), and the Inquisition’s advisors had began looking forward to Celene’s ball, it became clear that for whatever disagreements they may have between them, she and Cullen shared a mutual disdain for Orlesians. 

This simple fact had bonded them closely. In every strategy meeting leading up to the ball, they had exchanged knowing glances across the table in the War Room. Their eyes had met frequently across the table of the War Room, trading knowing smiles, disparaging jokes and snickers at the Orlesian’s expense. Josephine and Leliana bore this, for the most part, with patience.

There was, however, the one occasion when they had worn Josephine’s tactful demeanor down. Cullen had made a joke at the Empress’ expense, but this quip, beyond being a wry expression of bitterness, had been _genuinely_ funny. Thanduwen had fallen into such a fit of laughter that she could hardly suppress it. Better even than the joke was the look of surprise on Cullen’s face when he realized how much it had amused her. Several times she had tried to compose herself, only to start trembling again moments later as the laughter threatened to bubble out of her again. Leliana had scowled. Josephine, her patience already thin, had suggested they break for the afternoon and reconvene when their leader was prepared to treat the matter with the seriousness it required.

 

 

And now this Victory March, and all its pomposity! And so Thanduwen had been forced into this impossible dress.

“They don’t set the Holy Andraste in glass wearing a uniform,” Cullen continued, adjusting one of the lilies in her coronet. “Paintings, icons, statuettes—she’s always wearing a gown, isn’t she? Even as she’s crushing Tevinter with her Holy might.”

Thanduwen’s jaw dropped; then she wrinkled her nose, eyebrows knit. “Ooooh!” she seethed, and shook her head, risked upsetting her coronet again. “Josephine! She said she wanted me to look feminine, merciful, benevolent…. I would have far preferred to be _formidable_.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” Cullen said, smiling. It was almost nice, for once, to see her riled up at something inconsequential: not the cruelties of the world or the insidious threats that faced them, but something as trivial as a gown. “I am sorry for your discomfort. But for what it’s worth, you look lovely.” He nodded his head lightly in acknowledgment. “ _Formidable_ , even, to this Andrastian.”

Thanduwen looked at him suspiciously for a moment. Briefly (eyes held, a tension between them) she felt a faint warmth, a discomfort that had nothing to do with the dress. But then she pulled a face, sticking her tongue out, swiftly defusing whatever tension had thickened the atmosphere of the gatehouse. 

“Gross, Cullen. Knock it off.”

Cullen laughed. “As you command, Inquisitor.”

From outside the gatehouse came the sound of trumpets, complemented by other brass instruments rarely sung in Skyhold. Thanduwen straightened herself—going rigid all at once—took a deep breath.

“Are you ready?” Cullen asked, kindly.

“Born ready,” she asserted, unable to look at him, voice full of a confidence she did not feel, staring hard at the gatehouse door.

Cullen reached in front of her, and pushed the door open. 

The sound of the trumpets crescendoed. As soon as she stepped foot outside, a slash of white on the cobbles of the gatehouse, the Keep erupted in a raucous cheer that nearly deafened her.

She winced, tried to hide it with a smile; with any luck, most of the spectators were too far away to have noticed. But not Cullen. As she took her first steps into the Keep, she heard the deep rumble of his chuckle at her side. They set out to cross the courtyard, the might of the Inquisition proceeding behind them. 

Fiona, bedecked in the mixed regalia of both the triumphant Inquisition and the conquered Wardens, led the procession. Cullen and Thanduwen followed. Just behind them walked Mother Giselle, flanked on either side by two Chantry Sisters, each bearing the Inquisition’s banner. The gold spun thread caught the bright light of the midwinter sun, the all-seeing eye flashing triumphantly in the courtyard. Behind them, a pair of acolytes in the full flush of their youth swung a pair of thuribles; though the smell of frankincense could barely be detected on the mountain wind, it carried the smoke away in elegant, twisting trails away towards the mountain tops.

Mother Giselle was followed by the several Grand Clerics who had come at Josephine’s invitation from Val Royeaux to behold the might of “their” Inquisition. But Thanduwen knew their participation for what it really was: many of them hoped that, by closer association with the Inquisition, they would seem a stronger candidate to become the next Divine. After all, the reports from Val Royeaux suggested no one had yet emerged as a clear front-runner; a strong allegiance with the Inquisition could alter the course of an ambitious cleric’s campaign. In their midst, they carried a bier on which had been placed a bronze statue of Andraste, white flowers strewn across the platform around her feet, as though she were standing in a grove in full bloom.

(No matter that this was winter; no matter that no such flower could be found for miles around. This was the Inquisition, and they were Victorious; no expense had been spared.)

At the top of the stairs that led into the main keep they had raised a platform. Thanduwen had seen Blackwall nailing away at it furiously all afternoon, ensuring it was sturdy. Atop the platform stood what few Chantry sisters could be found within Skyhold (their numbers somewhat exaggerated by women Leliana had planted there, to dress and sing as Chantry sisters; Thanduwen’s particular politics had frightened many of them off long ago) singing the Chant. Their voices, raised in harmony, echoed off the walls of the fortress and towards the heavens. 

Thanduwen was thankful to have Cullen beside her. There were so many eyes on her—so many people looking at her behind their masks! As if that were not enough they hid those selfsame masks behind their fans, tittering, whispering to one another. She did not know whether she should feel offended or powerful, to have inspired such a murmur in them when solemnity would have been more appropriate, what with the Chant of Light ringing out across the courtyard. 

More trumpets; behind her, she could hear hoofbeats over the portcullis. Knight Captain Rylen rode over the bridge on a white horse, armored in gleaming mail and clothed in rich, impractical saddle blankets. Thanduwen was not sure where any of it had come from. The Inquisition had not been using horses for some time, able to cover longer distances at greater speed with their herd of harts. Most likely they were the gift of some noble trying to curry favor; that usually explained most of the absurdly impractical and decorative things that ended up on their doorstep. 

Behind Rylen came the percussive sound of the footfalls of her many soldiers, stepping perfectly in time with the rhythm of the trumpets and drums. The archers led the procession, followed by the spear men. Behind them (and by far the largest contingent of the procession) were the Free Mages.

They, too, had been outfitted with new robes. They had _vociferously_ declined to be dressed in Chantry red, a refusal that had Thanduwen’s full-throated support. They had pledged themselves (they reasoned) not to the Chantry (who, in their eyes, had abandoned them in their hour of greatest need, after many centuries of abuses in their Circles) but to the Inquisition. It was decided, therefore, that their robes would be cut of green cloth, the color best suited to subtly evoke the anchor. Unlike the other soldiers, they had not been permitted to bear their weapons. They marched without staves, but looked no less proud to march freely with the others, their contribution to the Inquisition’s victory both acknowledged and celebrated. 

Behind them came a (far smaller) contingent of former Templars, the few that the Inquisition had managed to sway to their cause. At the front of their group, bound and gagged, was Erimond. He was flanked on either side by knights, tightly gripping his forearms to keep him in line. The gag, unfortunately, had proven necessary; since entering into their captivity, Erimond had been prone to going off on long (and often vulgar) rants, denying both the Inquisition’s authority and their sound victory at Adamant. Even now he was resisting: at times, the Templars who flanked him were not so much holding him in place as they were lifting him, dragging him, his feet just barely skimming the ground as they led him across the courtyard into the Inquisition’s keep.

But this, still, was not all: behind the Templars came Alistair, the last remaining Warden of significant rank, here to pledge the service of the Grey Wardens to the Inquisition until their married might defeated the darkspawn,  Corypheus. 

Following him was procession of small biers, held aloft on the shoulders of soldiers, piled high with the armaments and artifacts of the conquered: the gleaming horns of Venatori helmets; tattered banners of the Venatori and Tevinter both; artifacts of old reclaimed from their camps. 

This was, to Thanduwen’s taste, a bit of sly overkill: though the Wardens had been misled by Venatori, there had not actually been any Venatori (other than Erimond himself) among their number at Adamant. This armor had instead been collected across the Western Approach as the Inquisition repelled them from Echoback Fort and Griffon Wing Keep. But Josephine had insisted upon the display—“to demonstrate that, though their enemies were many and varied, the Inquisition had prevailed against each of them”—and Thanduwen had relented.

And though she was at the front of the procession, and thus could not see the length of the procession she knew how extravagant and aggressive the display was. As she passed each set of Orlesian eyes, she tried to gauge their reaction—impressed? Intimidated? _Bored_?—but that was difficult to do with their features concealed behind their masks.

In this, it may have been helpful to have an Orlesian at her side, or at least someone who was more familiar with their ways; Leliana, or one of Josephines bard-diplomats. But she was glad to have Cullen instead, who found the whole exercise just as ridiculous as she did. 

It wasn’t that Thanduwen thought her army did not deserve recognition. Their victory at Adamant had been hard won, and in her eyes, their army had done far more to ensure that victory than she had herself. But this March did not feel like it was for the benefit of the Inquisition, for honoring their efforts. It was (to her eyes, at least) clearly for the benefit of their visitors, emissaries from the Empire that (unbeknownst to them) would be the next institution under attack from the Elder One. And the Inquisition would defend Orlais, as much as Thanduwen might have liked to see it crumble (though it revolted her, slightly, to admit, even to herself, that any chaos Corypheus might sow would bring her some secret delight.)

The whole thing seemed grossly intemperate, a waste of funds in a harsh winter that had already seen Skyhold’s resources pinched. The cost of the siege had been… significant. But Josephine had said it was necessary, and thus far, Josephine’s leadership in such things had not led them astray. She hoped the celebration would allow them to enter into Empress Celene’s negotiations from a position of greater strength—and that, Josephine had reminded Thanduwen, was as good for the Orlesian nobility as it was for Orlais’ elves, if Thanduwen wielded that influence with precision.

“Do you think it’s working?” Thanduwen couldn’t help but whisper to Cullen at her side. “All of this, the mages, Erimond, the new uniforms… is it having the desired effect?”

“I believe the term you’re looking for is ‘shock and awe’,” Cullen replied, and she could hear the distaste in his voice. “Your guess is as good as mine, Inquisitor. But I’m glad for our men. They deserve an opportunity to be recognized, to march with pride. After all, we’d be nowhere without their sacrifice.”

They ascended the stairs to the keep, then passed through the doors of the throne room. The procession had been timed precisely with the progression of the sun across the sky so that, within the Keep, the afternoon light was shining directly through the colored Serrault glass behind the throne. Jewel-toned shafts of light filled the room, shining on the Chantry statues and the throne upon the dais. The throne had been polished to such a shine for the occasion that Thanduwen could see the room reflected back at her on its surface, distorted as it was by the rippling, frozen pyre depicted on the throne’s back.

As they walked through the room—filled only with the most high-ranking members of the Inquisition, and the most influential of foreign dignitaries—Thanduwen cast her eyes about (as discretely as she could) for Solas. In the ten days since they’d arrived at Skyhold after their journey from the Approach, she’d seen him hardly at all.

 

 

They’d had a sort of… she hesitated to call it a _falling out_ , but what else was there to call it, when he made himself so scarce? No longer could he be found pouring over esoteric tomes and scrolls in the Rotunda, or working on his fresco. Whenever Thanduwen was free (which, admittedly, was not often; she had been away for some time, and the tasks requiring her personal attention had piled up somewhat: dress fittings and diplomatic meetings, strategy and planning with her advisors around the war table) he was no where to be found. At night, when she retired for the day, she hoped to meet him. But she never found him, neither in her bed nor in her dreams. 

When she had ripped open the Veil, carrying them safely from their Abyssal descent and into the Fade, she had thought the experience would bring them closer together. It had done anything but. The hope that the trip could be enlightening—academic, even—had been swiftly crushed. 

It had started with the Fears. Spiders, some had called them, but that was not what Thanduwen saw. Instead, she saw—

"Drohan!"

—rushed towards her brother, even as her companions shouted warnings behind her, even as she questioned how it was that he could be here when it had taken such a feat of power and magic for her and her companions to come through. But though he was no mage the same blood flowed through his veins, the same strength of their father’s magic. And it was the Fade after all, and she had not seen him in so long—the ache of his absence—and Fiona had told her of Wycome and the nobles there and perhaps in such danger, in such need he had simple _reached_ for her, and the fabric of the Beyond had yielded to him, and—

But he was not as he should be. Not as she remembered. His pale skin was sallow, his Dalish armor drenched in blood. And his eyes—angry. He’d never looked at her with such rage.

“You left us!” He shouted at her. And he as he reached behind him as if to knock an arrow into his quiver, she saw in place of his arm a bloodied stump, fumbling vainly at the fletched ends over his shoulder. “You have left us to die!”

Behind her, Blackwall’s voice: “Andraste’s bloomers, what is she doing?”

“Drohan, what happened?” Thanduwen asked, advancing towards him, staff sheathed, arms out stretched, hands already fluttering, fussing—his blood or another’s, all over his tunic?—with an ache in her heart that threatened to break her. 

“Traitor!” he shouted, voice thick with grief and righteous anger, his arm still reaching in vain for his quiver. “ _Harellan_!”

Thanduwen was mere feet from him, now, but his words stopped her dead in her tracks. _Traitor._ Still, she shook the insult off, forcing her footsteps forward even as his words struck her harder than the sharpest blows. (How could he? But she—) She could almost touch him. Almost embrace her brother, after so long. Ten months now since she’d seen him, and not one passed that she did not feel his absence. Whatever grief, grievances—irrelevant. Whatever insults he chose to shout now, irrelevant. Reduced to nothing as the space between them closed. She would hold him. They would embrace, as they used to. All would be forgiven. They would—

Fingertips inches from him, she paused, froze; she could _feel it_ , with greater sensitivity in the Fade than on the other side of the Veil, the magic being pulled as if out of thin air. Solas’ magic, fully formed and whizzing past her before she had time to shout. 

Drohan snarled like a beast, the smell of death and decay on his breath as he clawed for her—

But before his yellowed fingers could reach her, her brother fell beneath a rain of hail, each piece larger than her fist, each exploding upon impact, tiny ice shards sharp as glass digging themselves into her brother’s rotting flesh until (gasping, choking on his own blood) he fell—

“Solas, _no_!” she cried, “how could—he was—” but then no longer able to form intelligible words, sentences; only grief, only a wailing. 

The lamentation ricocheted and echoed, bouncing off the dreamlike topography of that realm, announcing their presence in the Nightmare to all within earshot.

Thanduwen fell to her knees over her brother’s crumpled body. By the time she had gathered it into her arms, he was already cold and still, eyes cloudy. _Traitor._ She had abandoned him in the Marches. _Traitor._ She had failed to adequately protect him. _Harellan._ She had left him behind with the others, and now he was—

Arms encircling her, loosening her grip on the body, gathering her into a lap. Solas held her tightly, restrained her as she reached again for Drohan. She could tell it was him by the words he whispered to her in Elvhen, soothing nonsense, meaningless, now. 

“You killed him!” she shouted against his tunic, struggling to break free of his grasp. She did not want his words, his touch; she _hated_ him.

“It isn’t him,” he breathed softly against her temple, rubbing circles against her back. “It is a trick of the Nightmare. It isn’t him, Thanduwen. It’s alright.”

She beat her fists against his chest, still struggling against his embrace until her grief and her shock overtook her, and she allowed herself to be held, soaking Solas’ clothing with tears.

Alistair and Hawke were kind enough to avert their gaze, retreating to a distance at which they could not hear the words of comfort and reassurance that Solas whispered to her as he rocked her on the ground. They whispered instead with Blackwall and Cole. 

“If our coming was a secret, it is no longer,” Hawke asserted. “We cannot stay here. We are sitting ducks. They’ll be coming soon, more of them. We have to move.”

When Thanduwen finally gathered enough strength to stand, she looked unwell; pale, still shaken from the ordeal. Nevertheless they continued onward. Into more of the same:

Keeper Deshanna, her staff snapped in two, arrows embedded in her chest. “This is all because of you, and your weakness! I should have sent another to the Conclave in your stead! Harellan! You were supposed to protect us! It was your responsbility!”

Ithras, his face bloated and deformed, as if he’d been left to float and rot in the waters outside Wycome. “There is no one to sing the rites! No one to lay us to rest with an oaken staff, none to guide us home!”

“Harellan!”

“Harellan!” 

“Harellan!”

 

 

This was how she reasoned it: they were not real. That much was certain. Apparitions of the Nightmare, taking a different form in the eyes of each member of their party. That did not make it any easier to fight them, as she must, but it was true. More true: her Clan _did_ need her. And if she was not to abandon and betray them, she _must_ make it out of this place. This Nightmare. So though it shook her to her core—made her nauseous, weak, less efficient in her killing than usual—she slaughtered the Fears with the others. She watched her friends and family assail her, then fall, then still under the violence of her own magic.

_Harellan…_

(Later, he would ask her, “What did it say on your gravestone?” and she would tell him: _harellan_ , a traitor of the people. And Solas would turn away from her, unable to meet her eyes, her admission stirring something in him he did not disclose. And when she asked him, (though she already knew the answer, as she had caught a glimpse of his stone) “What did it say on yours?” she would catch him in a lie. “It said the same thing,” he said, quietly, still looking away from her. “Traitor.” He had, to her knowledge, never lied to her before; this threatened to unsettled her more than the screaming accusatory voices of her perhaps-already-dead kin. For not only was it a lie, but a flimsy one. _Traitor._ Solas claimed allegiance to no one, nothing but himself. Whom did he have to betray?)

| _Though, like many of Fen’Harel’s lies, it was not entirely a lie—lie-adjacent—though the Child of the Dales knew it not at the time. If Fen’Harel feared dying alone above all other things, it was because he knew already with certainty that he was a traitor, had been a traitor, would be a traitor again. Harellan: he had worn the title like a badge of pride, for that betrayal had been justifiable, righteous. But not the betrayal that must come next. He would betray her._

_Began to see it now, though he had been ensnared by the idea that she might stand beside him when the time came. Doubting, as he saw her grieve over her phantom brother, that he would succeed as he had planned. Might fail to turn her, wholly, to his cause._

_Could she bear to be his Queen? To stand beside him in the ruins of this world, help him remake one that was Just and Fair? Could she leave this place, these people, this broken world behind?_

_Fen’Harel began to doubt…_

_If he feared dying alone it was because he knew his nature would lead him to that very fate. His_ nature. _As though he could not change. Refused to. She saw the words “harellan” on her gravestone and resolved not to let such a thing come to pass. He saw the words “dying alone” and knew that it would._

_But, as Fen’Harel knows as well as I, one often meets one’s fate on the road one takes to avoid it. |_

  

 

The one definitive thing they had learned was that it had been Divine Justinia, and not Andraste, who had pushed Thanduwen through the Veil and back to the Temple. And it had been Thanduwen, intruding on Corypheus' blood magic ceremony, who had put the mark upon her hand when she had seized the orb at the critical moment during the incantation. This, however, had done nothing to persuade Josephine or Leliana to put an end to this business of her being "chosen."   
  
(After all, as Cullen had so insightfully noted, she was dressed even now to evoke images of the Holy Bride.)   
  
There had been a bit of a throw down about this. Thanduwen eagerly wanted to put to rest forever this question of her holiness. But, Leliana had argued, to tell the truth would require an explanation of how they'd arrived at it, and it was probably best not to announce the Inquisitor had been able to breach the Veil and enter the Fade unscathed. Others, no doubt, would try to replicate her feat, and whether or not they succeeded their attempts were likely to do further damage to the Veil, already thin, thinning still from the damage Corypheus had brought upon it. 

 

 

Back in the Waking World, in Adamant’s bailey, the Wardens had surrendered. Perhaps the spectacle of the Inquisitor appearing as if out of thin air, her companions in tow, had been enough to shock them into submission; those still possessed had no doubt come to their senses when the Nightmare had been slain.   
  
Hawke had done that. Hawke had freed them. And when Thanduwen told them as much, that such sacrifice had been required correct their folly, this seemed to add further shame to the Warden’s already considerable burden. 

The Champion of Kirkwall, lost….

But that left the question of what to do with them. And here was where her falling-out with Solas had come to a head.

“Why did you allow them to remain here?” Once they were in private he had practically snarled the words at her. He respected her enough, at least, to wait until they were unseen and out of earshot to scold her with such ferocity. “They are unwise, selfish, ignorant—they contend with forces they do not even _begin_ to understand—”

“Because, _Solas_ ,” Thanduwen had hissed. “Because if there is the chance that they are still susceptible too Corypheus’ will, I want to know about it. I don’t want to be halfway across the continent, and not find out until they come knocking on my doorstep! I want to be able to keep as close an eye on them as possible. Trust me when I say, Solas, that it was not out of _pity_.”

“You have made a foolish mistake,” he said, shaking his head. “They could turn on you again at any moment. There is no telling what other allegiances Corypheus may have in the Fade, how many other demons could command the Blight-song within them and corrupt the Wardens again, and now they will be, as you put it, perpetually _on your doorstep._ ”

She shot him a look, pulling her armor over her head, undressing, desperate for rest. “There was a time when I might have listened to you, Solas. Searched for a better solution. But I must admit I find your criticisms far less palatable now that I know you’ve been lying to me.”

“And when, precisely, did I lie to you?”

“About what you saw. In the graveyard, in the Fade. And I can’t imagine _why_ you would lie about such a thing, but that almost makes it worse _._ ”

He looked at her, deadpan for a moment, before a new anger rose in him, unlike anything she’d ever had directed at her before. Seething, fuming, like the roar of a tide rising, “You _looked_.”

 

 

They had argued into the night about it: invasions of privacy, breaches of trust, the wisdom (or lack thereof) in the decisions she had made. In the end they had slept that night in separate tents, Solas exiled to Cole’s. There had been apologies the morning after, as they embarked on their journey back to Skyhold. But those apologies had not been heartfelt, both of them still sore over the trust that had been broken. And though Solas returned to her side, sleeping beside her for the remainder of the journey, she feared now their was a rift between them that she could not cross.

| _And she was right. He had deluded himself for some time that this union of theirs would last. But now the doubt grows within him, a seed germinating._

_When the time came, he was sure, she would leave him. If she had found that small lie so unpalatable, she would never forgive him for his other deceptions. When she saw him for the beast he was she would cease to love him wholly._

_He would not give her the chance. He would not torture her with that choice. All of this—the betrayal, the leaving, the limited time that was left to them—now seemed to him inevitable._ |

And now in the throne room he was nowhere to be found, though she would have dearly liked to see him; even the sight of him there would have steeled her considerably for what was to come. But though she saw many of her companions cloistered at the front of the room—Dorian, Leliana, Bull, each of whom cheered her by their presence in their own way—Solas was absent.

Thanduwen did her best not to let her disappointment show on her face, but Cullen must have sensed it, or seen her searching the crowd. “He’ll come,” he said, keeping his voice low, his expression neutral, though he passed her a warm, comforting glance out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m not so sure.”

“But how could he resist,” Cullen said, appraising the crowd, “when there are so many people and decisions about which he can vociferously express his disapproval? Is he not like a moth to flame, in those situations?”

Thanduwen shot him a warning look out of the corner of her eye. He pretended not to notice, but even at this angle, with his face turned away from her and into the crowd, she could see him grinning.

 

 

Gradually, they reached the dais. She raised the hem of her skirt to prevent her from tripping on its length as she ascended the stairs. She could see her form (so feminine and unfamiliar) reflected back at her in the polished bronze of the throne, wreathed in holy flame. Thanduwen turned, eased herself slowly (regally, she hoped) onto the seat as all the eyes in the room turned to her. 

But the dress (made of the finest, smoothest of silks) had no traction against the throne (polished to a shine) and as soon as she let her weight fall full on the seat she realized her mistake, slip-sliding—

Cullen’s arm came out to steady her. Save her. Spare her from the embarrassment of a fall. He held her upper arm gently as she shifted her weight on the throne, corrected her posture.   
  
Thanduwen passed him a grateful smile, and then he took his place to the left side of her throne. Fiona, who now technically outranked him (leading both the Mages and the Wardens) held the place of honor at her right. 

The procession wove through the throne room, following in their wake. The room was far too small to contain the mass of bodies that came through the high door, so each group entered, bowed to her on her throne (often accompanied by pledges or shouts, “Glory to the Inquisition!” “All hail the Herald of Andraste!”) before proceeding out a side door into the garden, to make room as rest of the procession to wound its way through the room. 

Archers, swordsmen, mages; biers stacked tall with the raiment of those who fell beneath the Maker’s Holy Blade…. The procession ended in an array of benedictions and invocations by Mother Giselle, in the name of a God in which Thanduwen did not believe. 

When they had finished, Alistair approached the dais and knelt before her. Fiona descended to greet him. And Alistair, Hero of the Blight, swore an oath of fealty to her: the Grey Wardens would rebuild their order at the feet of the Frostbacks; they would seek to regain their lost honor by supporting the efforts of Inquisition. (Though Alistair himself—being of the highest rank of those Wardens that had survived the coercions of Erimond, and the siege of Adamant—would return to Weisshaupt, to relay the events that had conspired to drive the order to ruin, and how the hand of the Inquisitor had delivered them.

He would not go alone. After the oath was pledged, Erimond was brought forward for judgement. And Thanduwen knew what those gathered wanted from her then. They wished to see a display of Power—of mercy or cruelty, they did not care—to see her grind this man beneath her boot. Today, she would not do it. Erimond had not, she reasoned, wronged her; he had wronged the Wardens, who were largely autonomous and, though they recognized her authority, were not obliged to yield to it. Alistair would take Erimond on his journey to Weisshaupt (with a few companions, who would serve as guards, to make certain the slippery eel did not vanish in the ink black of night) where he would face the judgment of those he had wronged most gravely.

(Later, Leliana would congratulate her for this: this restraint, this deference. She would say that it made her look both benevolent and ruthless at once, well fit to sit on the pyre-shaped throne that she had only moments prior nearly slid clean off of.)

 

 

And then—at last!—once the sordid business (judgements, oaths, parades of martial might) was finished, it was time for the celebration.

The Orlesians, by this point, were positively quaking with anticipation. They had little patience for religious ceremony, tolerating it just enough so as to not appear they found the whole display _distasteful._

The celebration began in earnest. Costly cordials, ales, and liquors of every conceivable variety flowed freely from their casks, imported from the farthest reaches of Thedas for the occasion. Goblets were filled once, perhaps twice, to better lubricate the humors of their noble guests before the party began.

And here no expense had been spared: performers from across the continent had come (at the promise of gold but, ahh, more importantly‚ the right to say they had performed in the Inquisitors court, knowing what such bragging rights were worth in publicity and the promise of future engagements) to entertain at this most festive occasion. It was the most life and mirth Skyhold had seen in many centuries.

There was a long list of performances: feats of acrobatics, with gymnasts descending from the ceiling on spools of unravelling gold silk; a troupe of nine singers (one for each canticle of the Chant) who sang an excerpt of the Trials so beautifully it almost moved even Thanduwen to tears, disbeliever and heretic though she was; Nevarrans, come down from across the sea to perform a rite to ease the passage of the dead, those valiant souls felled in the Siege; from Antiva, the Sword-Dancers; from Val Royeaux, an all-female dance troop that stood so high and erect on the toes of their blocked shoes it gave the impression their limbs were all smooth, sanguine lines, uninterrupted by such inelegant things as ankles, wrists. 

Then came the Inquisition’s mages who, despite being honored, were keen to honor in turn, and to no small degree impress upon their guests that their magic could be used to delight as well as destroy. 

One mage cast a spell that caused all of the flowers decorating the hall to bellow like trumpets, and rain down upon the guests a stardust like pollen that caught so magnificently upon the eyelashes. Another weaved an illusion that at once changed the liquids in everyone’s cups, carrying them all through a retinue of sweet and savory flavors (the freshest of blueberries from the south of Ferelden at the end of summer, pressed into wine; a molten, golden cocktail that tasted of cream and butterscotch and warmed not only the throat but the tongue with its burn) before transfiguring all the liquids back into their original substances. A pair of twins, parted at birth but reunited when the Inquisition freed them, wove a narrative of the Inquisition’s victory out of sweetly scented and brightly colored smoke. It rose from the braziers that lined the hall into the air above the heads of the collected crowd, twisting into shapes of soldiers and fortress walls and massive spiders lurking in shadows. All the while their twinned bodies undulated beneath this display like snakes, willing the smoke into action as if by force of their dancing alone.

It was between these shifting shapes of smoke (crimson, then shining silver as fog on a chill autumn morning, then green as the Graves in the flush of summer) that Cullen stepped closer to her, bent towards her ear, whispered: 

“On the left, between the statue and the tapestry.”

Thanduwen turned to him, seeking clarification, but Cullen had already retreated to a respectable distance, his hand on the pommel of his sword. She turned her eyes then to the left wall of the throne room and—yes— _there._

He was pressed against the wall, managing to look so apart and distinct from the evening’s festivities even though he stood only a few feet outside of it. He sipped from a goblet, hardly bothering to hide his boredom, but Thanduwen hardly cared; she was so _pleased_ to see him there she sat up straighter, smiled, indifferent to the eyes that watched her. She needed no one’s approval, cared little what anyone thought about the happiness it brought her to see him, once again: her Solas, in her castle.  

| _Altogether bored at this display of merry-making, which could not match even the most perfunctory of the celebrations we had witnessed in the glorious days of Arlathan. Flowers blooming and singing, as if by magic? In those days even an apprentice could make the very walls sing and transform, crystal pillars blooming into vines and flowers that reflected and refracted the light from the many-tiered chandeliers, hovering in midair, suspended not by chains but by charms. There, the lights would rain not this pitiful glitter but gemstones of every color and size: teardrop shaped rubies, red as blood; sapphires cut in the most pleasing of shapes, pearls as big as your fist. |_

Soon, Thanduwen would encircle him, throw her arms around him, drag him into the chaos of the revelry—but not yet. Even now, she spied Marco in the wings. When their eyes met, his were sparkling with the mischief of their secret; she felt, at last, a nascent excitement within her. 

   
  


 

When the mages had completed their performances, and the applause had faded, there was one moment of near-silence: hushed whispers of anticipation of what would come next, and the delicate sound of bejeweled fingers tapping against goblets. 

Then, from the balcony where Vivienne most often perched, a musician dragged his bow across the strings of his fiddle, letting loose a long, low chord, followed by a succession of brisk, lively notes. A fast and boisterous melody.

Suddenly, dancers vaulted outwards from the sides of the room into the center, clearing a wide space. 

A few nobles cried out in surprise as the dancers flipped backwards and spun into the center of the room. Marco entered with a springing step that carried him far into the air, his leg kicked up past his shoulders as he turned. Scissoring their legs into lines divinely parallel to the floor, women leapt and twirled, dancing behind him. 

What followed was a feat of athleticism as much as dance; in its own way, it put the military parade to shame. The men float their partners into the air by no more than momentum and an arm circle tight around their waist. The women allow themselves to be lifted, making it look effortless, weightless, though it is the strength of their own legs that has allowed them to soar so high.

Marco is paired with a woman in a purple dress. At the center of the room, as the other Rivaini’s look on and clap, he reaches between her legs, grabs her hands, and guided her in a full revolution, feet over head over feet, a tumble. She lands soundly on her feet to great applause, nimble footed as a fae.

Another pair: the young man holds a girl under her shoulders, swinging her torso with great force. Her legs pivoted around her waist in a full revolution, never once touching the floor, spinning like a compass needle; with each turn, he lifts his legs out from under him in time, to give her legs unimpeded passage: left, right, left. 

Each feat builds upon those that preceded it. Each is more daring than the last. But not quite so daring as the scandal that occurs when the music lowers, slows, just for a moment; hardly more than a breath.

Marco approaches the dais; Thanduwen meets his eyes. 

His chest rises and falls dramatically beneath the flowing white gauze of his shirt, and when he extends his hand towards her, beckoning her to join him, he winks, saucily, in full view of the gathered audience. He is _dauntless._ In the wake of the ostentatious display that began the celebrations, the gesture thrills Thanduwen. And when she rises off the polished pyre throne, gathering the long white train of her dress into her hand to free her legs, kicking off her shoes as she descends the dais to join him, the nobles utter a gasp: a sound of collective, scandalized synchronicity. 

The tile of the room is cool beneath her bare feet; Thanduwen’s toes curled and flexed in delight, both at the joy of being free of the heeled shoes Josephine had pressed her into, and in anticipation of the footwork to come. She presses her hand (finely manicured, but too scarred and callused from months of battles to be mistaken, really, for the hand of a lady) into his. His palm is warm and slick with the sweat of exertion, and tanned from warm summers on the Amaranthine coast.

Marco’s hand closed over hers; then, without hesitation, he wrapped his arm around her waist, and carried her off with a sweeping gesture, into the fray of other dancers who turn their heads and welcome Thanduwen into their dance with a cheer.

 

 

No doubt the eyes of the Orlesians are pressed upon her: in scorn, disapproval, curiosity. But Thanduwen does not think of them, not for a minute. Her body is pressed close against Marco’s. She can feel the strength in his arms as he holds her, leading her in a series of effortless, lightning quick turns. They had rehearsed so carefully in the cloistered shadows of the Skyhold courtyard that the steps come quickly to her, already mastered the afternoon before. It is easy to follow him. To become lost, subsumed into the dance. Daisy-chaining along the round they have created, linking arms with each of the dancers in turn.

The throne room passes around her in flashes. The dance moves so quickly that in the corner of her vision, beyond the faces and bodies of the Rivainis who have welcomed her as though she is one of their own, the Orlesians are no more than smears of garish color. Their reactions, whatever they may be, do not touch her; she does not pay them any mind at all.

It is, no doubt, a vigorous dance: a display of strength as much as prowess and grace. When she comes together with Marco once again he leads her in a series of hops and leaps, sweeps her off of her feet as he lifts her, spins. He makes her feel weightless. Not in the bodily sense, a tallying of bone and meat and sinew, but that she feels… free. Here, now, at the end of the scheduled performances, he has allowed her into this space of joy and freedom, shed of her responsibilities, crossed the invisible line that kept her isolated on the dais throughout and apart from the merrymaking. She is no longer condemned to look upon it alone. 

  
 

A second time the music slows, but still does not halt; there is some faint and tentative applause, swiftly hushed. Among themselves the dancers share a conspiratory glance. Then, as the volume of the music crescendoes and its pace begins to quicken once more, they disperse like pollen: each reaching out to the gathered crowd, beckoning them to join. 

Many are tentative, hesitant to join in. Surely this restraint can be justified, as many of the nobles wear dresses with trains far too voluminous to be suited to such nimble dancing. But Thanduwen knew of two close at hand who were no so impractically adorned. 

She beckoned to Fiona, reaching out her hand; Fiona grinned, stepped forward without complaint, and was swept away in the arms of one of the dancers across the floor. 

Then Thanduwen turned to Cullen. 

He gave a barely perceivable but distinct shake of his head: _no_. But Thanduwen only grinned at him mischievously, playfully crooking a finger, _come hither, come hither_. Those who were not being badgered themselves had turned their attention to the Inquisitor and her Commander; under their glances, Cullen's face was turning a lovely shade of beet. 

There was no where for him to turn, to hide from her approach. When she was three feet before him, palm opened upwards for his, he groaned. 

“If Josephine had told me I’d be obliged to dance, I wouldn’t have come at all,” he said, keeping his voice low.

Thanduwen laughed. “Don’t blame this on her! She was not privy to my plans.” She extended her arm farther, wiggling her fingers expectantly. “Come on, Cullen. Join us, loosen up. You're wound so tightly sometimes I worry one that of these days you'll simply snap. And this is your victory to enjoy, as much as anyone’s.”

“Fiona is the one who led us to victory,” Cullen said, nodding to the other Commander, whirling across the floor in Marco’s embrace. “She kept it together while I was in pieces. I hardly deserve—”

“None of us,” Thanduwen interrupted, “deserve anything. Any of this. The wine or the spun sugar or the celebration. We’re only patting ourselves on the back for spilling more blood, spending money on luxuries we can hardly afford. Even so, we shouldn’t let the Orlesians spoil the occasion for us entirely; we can’t let _them_ win. Now, are you going to join me,” she said, slowly, barely able to suppress her smile, “or are you going to embarrass me in front of all of our guests?”

Cullen looked hard at her for a moment, his gaze flickering between her hand (still extended in greeting) and her eyes. Then he sighed. “You haven’t really give me much of a choice,” he said, crossing the space towards her, and placing his hand in hers.

The leather of his glove was warm to the touch. Thanduwen squeezed his hand in welcome, and led him down the dais.

At the foot of the stairs Cullen stopped, stood. Uncomfortable still, he scratched the back of his neck as was his manner, elbow pointing skywards. Too hesitant. Thanduwen crept behind him and gave him a hard push, sending him reeling into the arms of the Rivaini dancer who had been Marcos’ partner, the girl in purple who smelled of sea breeze and orange blossoms, with a laugh like sea spray. Thanduwen laughed aloud to see him swept away by her, footwork clumsy, blushing madly—lips moving to an apology she could not hear, but looking, despite himself, a little pleased to be led. His blush had crept to the top of his ears; when the girl reached around him to adjust his hold of her, to lower his hands and press tighter, the blush burned deeper. 

She only paused to watch him for a minute, nibbling her lower lip to bite back her laughter, before she turned along the left side of the hall, making her way across the room to Solas.

When she found him he was still leaning against the wall, goblet in hand. Looking, Thanduwen could not help but note, every bit as disapproving as Cullen had said he would be. But when he caught sight of her making her way towards him, one eyebrow arched dramatically in amusement.

“So you've come for me after all,” he said. “I was beginning to think I would get off easy, that you’d make the Commander your partner and leave me in peace.”

“Never,” Thanduwen said, grinning, seizing his hand and dragging him onto the floor with such urgency he barely had time to set his goblet on the table. 

  
  


When it was over—when the music ended with one last triumphant note, and the dancers whirled to a stop with much rustling of fabrics and cheers—Thanduwen whisked Solas away, through the doorway that led to the passageway into the garden, well-trod by the military parade that had come several hours before. 

Empty, now. She pushed him against the cold stone walls, pressed kisses (feverish from the exertion of the dance) to his collar, his neck, and begged, implored him to disappear with her.

“You looked lovely,” he heaved, still breathy from dancing. “A vision.”

“How would you know?” she chided, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “You only crept in at the end.”

“Did you really think I was not watching you? I saw you enter the room. I saw you nearly slip off your seat of power in front of all those nobles. I merely watched from a place where I would not have to endure the company of our Orlesian guests. You would not, I think, blame me for that.”

The idea that he had been watching— _looking out for her_ , even if she could not see him—warmed her. She snuck her fingers under his tunic, stroked the skin of his sides.

Two casks of cold ale had been set aside for the Rivainis (a part of their contract) and following their performance many of them were retreating to their camp to partake in a revelry that would likely offend the sensibilities of the Orlesians. “Let's leave them, then. The Orlesians,” she had said. “Let’s go off with the Rivainis. I’ve done what the occasion required of me. Let's disappear.”

“I'd thought you might want to,” Solas replied, fingers squeezing gently, affectionately, along her upper arms. “But I have a different destination in mind.”

“Oh?" Thanduwen asked, delighted, curling her body closer to his. “And where are you whisking me off to this time? The bedroom? And then the bedroom as a gateway to some fanciful dreamscape?”

His lip twitched. The idea appealed to him, but he wrestled with his desire until it was under control. He had already made other plans, too elaborate to abandon now. 

Still that did not stop his hand from coming to the collar of her dress, loosening it from her shoulder, pressing a kiss to the exposed skin of her clavicle. “The bedroom, first,” he said. “To change. As _radiant_ as you look, this dress is not very practical.” His lips trailed lower, along her sternum to the swell of her breast. He mumbled against her, “Change into something comfortable for riding, and warm. Then meet me down by the stables.”

It took longer than she would have liked. The task required her to cross the throne room to the entrance to her tower, and now the party was in full swing. Solas (as slippery and unremarkable as always) crept past without trouble, but Thanduwen was pressed at each step to greet some dignitary, each indistinguishable from the next. Gradually, she made her way to the entrance to her tower; once the door had closed behind her, she took the stairs two at a time, racing to her chamber.

 

 

Once she had changed into more suitable clothes, she descended the full length of the wooden stairs in her tower, down towards the back exit that would lead her directly to the courtyard.

Solas was already in the stables, standing beside a grey hart, already saddled. He was patting its nose, whispering soothing words to it. The hart gave a snort as it saw Thanduwen approach; in the night winter air, two plumes of steam issue forth from his nostrils.

When Solas saw her he smiled in that way he sometimes did, a secret tucked into the corner of his mouth.  

“I brought you this,” she said, extending her arm. She’d brought him a cape (a patterned velvet monstrosity) knowing how thin his clothing was. Solas looked amused, but draped the cape around his shoulders without complaint.   
  
A little tipsy, Thanduwen could not help but think it suited him. He looked regal. Kingly, even. But she kept the observation to herself, the warm and secret pleasure of it. She had no wish to embarrass him.  

Solas vaulted easily up into the saddle. Thanduwen followed him with greater care, fussing with his cape, arranging it snugly around his body before she rose into the saddle in front of him. His body was warm behind her as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

And then, they were off. Even as the hart’s hooves echoed across the courtyard they could hear the sounds of the party in the Keep above through the thin winter air: delighted laughter, music, the clinking of goblets. The sounds brought to mind the castle’s warmth, the wine, the banquets laden with foods of every description, but Thanduwen did not miss it.

On their journey to the gatehouse they saw not one but two couples fondling one another in the dark and (mostly empty) corners of the courtyard. Thanduwen could not help but wonder idly if they were bards, so practiced in their art she could not disentangle their passion from their profession. _But no_ , she thought, as the hart clopped softly past and they went on in their fondling undisturbed, _that looks real. That is real_.

   
  


They descended to the valley floor in the barbican’s lift, and from that point picked a trail along the riverside, still descending, until they were bellow the treeline. The moon was half-full—waning—but the night was clear, and all the mountainside was cut in shapes of glittering silver and crushed, dark shadow. The snow crunched softly as they made their way along, and all in the night was still, even the river silent,  frozen. 

She thought of the tent filled with sweet fruits, the hiding place he’d erected for them in the Approach. Did a similar surprise await her in the dark forest? A refuge among the trees? 

And then, remembering that first night, and the passion, and the argument that followed, and the reconciliation that followed that… she leaned back against Solas, turning her head just enough to press a kiss to the corner of his chin. 

“I missed you,” Thanduwen said. In the night’s silence it struck her how soft and warm the declaration sounded, or perhaps it was merely the sincerity of the thing, so unquestionable in its simplicity and so unlike the pomp that had occupied the larger part of the afternoon. “I missed this.” Not the night, nor riding with him, but this silence that only they could share. A comfortable warm humming betwixt them. It hadn’t been that way since leaving the Approach.

“I’m sorry?” he asked behind her, voice muffled.

“I missed you,” she repeated, turning her head towards him to carry her voice, but he did not wait for the words; instead, he leaned forward in the saddle, pressing his mouth to the corner of hers. She felt color touch her cheeks. A thoroughly girlish gesture, unbefitting of her years, but the affection had caught her by surprise.

When she settled back his arms were firmer around her waist; she leaned backwards, into the warmth of his chest. The hart plodded along on his own, picking a path along the river, and Solas tucked his chin over her shoulder, his breath warm on her cheek.

“It pained me terribly to be apart from you.” There was a sincerity in his voice and a sadness too, as if the grief of their parting still lingered, like the taste of wine on the tongue long after the cup has been emptied. “It was not the first time we were parted. I know too it will not be the last. But on this occasion was… particularly bitter.”

She wished dearly that she could see him, watch the worry lines crease his face as he confessed, then hold his face in her hands, warmed between her palms as she kissed him. This would not be possible. She thought perhaps that was why he had chosen the single hart: to hold her near to him and whisper contrition into her ear, all while maintaining his privacy, the secrets his visage always kept.

“And did it do you good?” She chided, gently. “Your self-imposed, painful exile from the castle. Was it worthwhile?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer. 

(And he could feel it, the tightness of her stomach underneath his palms.)

“You will be the judge of whether or not it proved worthwhile—had I not left, I would not have been able to arrange your surprise,” he said, smiling against the warm flesh of her neck, pressing another kiss. Then he sighed—she felt the warm puff of it against her, longing exhale, and the way he went concave behind her—untucked his shoulder. “I am always having to surprise you, to make something up to you. All my disappearances, my careless words. Always asking your forgiveness.” 

“I forgive you,” she said, softly. “As I will, always. As often as I can bear it.”

He sighed again, and she could feel the tip of his nose as he dragged it against the back of her neck, before he pressed one last kiss to the hairline at the nape of her neck. “Then I pray your generosity and understanding does not run out, no matter how regularly I try it. But I will not do so tonight. Tonight is for celebration.”

“Will you tell me, then, where you are taking me?”

She felt him grin into the back of her neck. “It isn’t far, now.”

Solas guided the hart down the mountainside, into the mountain pass that lined the border between Ferelden and Orlais. But then he steered the hart off the road and into the forest, through a dense cluster of trees, still green in winter. The scent of pine was heavy in the air, shook loose by the light rain taut had fallen earlier that day.   
  
Eventually they came to a grove of blue spruce. A circular space had been cleared between the ancient, towering trees. It was a beautiful spot but otherwise unremarkable. Still, "We've arrived," Solas said, and slowed the hart to a halt. 

When he had said "surprise," she had thought of the oasis he had led her to on the lip of the Abyssal Rift. But there was nothing here. The snow was untouched. 

She was left to puzzle over the mystery for but a moment. Solas raised his hand into the air to perform some subtle, staff-less magic. His palm began to glow with a bright, golden light. As he opened and closed it, the light flickered. He did this once, twice. The third time he let the light linger, a longer beat before he closed his fist over it. One fourth, brief pulse; then the magic was extinguished. 

A signal, unmistakable, though she knew not what it signified, nor whom the message was intended for. But then, the shadows surrounding the grove began to move. 

Soft sounds, barely perceptible. The hart’s ears twitched in alertness, and he brayed, soft and low. Then— _there_!—in the distance, came a soft and musical whinny in response. 

Thanduwen's pulse quickened; her heart seemed to leap into her throat. “Is that…?" But she could not bear to finish her question, as if by naming the creature she thought she'd heard the possibility of it would shatter and leave her bereft. Solas turned to her, and by the faint light reflected off the snow she could see him smile.  

“Keep listening.”

Then, she heard it: faint but distinct among the murmured sounds of night, the practiced patterned and near silent steps, the way each young Dalish was taught to walk the woods without drawing attention to themselves.  
  
“Oh, Solas,” she moaned. And all else slipped away. The party, the nobles, displays of military prowess, the burden of the Anchor and the political difficulties that came with it. These things fell away from her as easily as the white gown had slithered down her shoulder to the floor of her bedroom. And then she was only Thanduwen, daughter of Soufei, child of the Dales and Clan Lavellan—no more. Complete and undivided by mixed allegiance. 

They appeared at once from the darkness: eight Dalish elves, all wearing the ceremonial dress that was only worn on occasions of celebration. The torches they bore cast a glimmer on their polished iron bark, and holly was wreathed about their heads. Thanduwen could tell from their raiment they were all from the same clan, though she could not say which one.  
  
As the crowd grew closer her eyes fell upon a young man. His copper colored hair flowed freely around his face which was marked bright red with the vallaslin of Elgar’nan. Bright eyes shone at her, a playful smile on his lips. 

He was familiar to her, she realized, but from a part of her life that seemed to her now so distant and alien it might as well have been a dream. Her first Arlathven, many summers ago, the same summer she had met Keeper Hawen. Like a warm spring his name bubbled to the surface of her mind and then past her lips in a cry of such elation she trembled as she spoke it.   
  
“Ellathin?" she asked, incredulous, leaping across the grove to greet him. 

He bent into an exaggerated bow, though behind his curtain of copper hair he kept his eyes trained on her. His hair fell back into place elegantly as he tilted his chin to look up at her from his playful prostration.  
  
“Herald of Andraste,” he said his voice full of laughter. “Inquisitor. Thanduwen, Daughter of Soufei, first of Clan Lavellan.”  
  
“Please spare me your formality so that I can greet you properly, _lethallan_.” 

Ellathin laughed as he righted himself. Thanduwen hardly gave him the time to do so before she was upon him, clasping his elbow firmly in her hand, caressing the pate of his inclined head with her own. As their faces touched she could smell upon him the scents she so dearly missed from her old life: the smell of the polish that kept his ironbark fit, the remnants of his dinner (Dalish stew) upon his breath, the musk of the halla that had bore him here.   
  
He moved away from her but she did not release him, still clutching to his elbow, breathing in his scent. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, needed to know how he had come to be before her. She feared she would wake and all of this would prove a dream, a fantasy brought on by homesickness and too much wine.

“We outnumber you four to one, sister. You've stumbled into our territory; it seems I should be asking that question of you.”

“Clan Tillahnen does not keep territory so high in the mountains,” she scolded. “You couldn't. I know these mountains better than I'd like. In this forsaken cleft between Orlais and Ferelden, there’s nothing here to subsist on.”

Solas had tied the hart to graze at one of the spruce trees. As he approached, Thanduwen turned to him, incredulous. “How did you—”

“Not easily,” he answered, smiling. “But Josephine is not the only one skilled in diplomacy. I did not think the celebration of your victory would be complete if it was not acknowledged by your own.”

Ellathin’s eyes met him. “Your friend here is very persuasive, for a _tor’vhen_ ,” he said, nodding in Solas’ direction. “He knew our customs, knew how to approach us without drawing suspicion. And he knew we would not perform for outsiders, in your Keep, as our dance is not entertainment—it is history. He must have brought plenty of coin to sweeten the offer—Keeper Roshin hardly bat an eyelid before sending us off with him, to come here.”

“That’s not the only reason, Ellathin,” one of the other Dalish scowled, tightening the ironbark brace around his calf. Then he peered around Ellathin’s form, nodded in turn to Solas. “He told us of your deeds. Keeper Roshin is now convinced that you are the Light-Bearer.”

“Oh, no,” Thanduwen said hurriedly, shaking her head in refusal, “that’s not—”

But Ellathin put a finger to his lips, shook his head, eyes crinkling with mirth. “If you say otherwise, we’ll have to turn around and return home,” he joked.

Thanduwen leaned in close to him, whispered. “No one else is saying that, are they?”

Ellathin only shrugged. “I wouldn’t trouble yourself over it, _lethallen_. They’ll debate _at length_ it at the next Arlathvhen. Until then, Roshin can say it ’til he’s blue in the face and it won’t mean anything.”

{ _The Dread Wolf saw the myth and seized it, hammered it, fashioned it into a shape that would fit you. But you will not know this yet—not for some time. And when the Arlathvhen comes, there will be far more to debate than whether or not you are the Light-Bearer, the one who is Destined to Lead the Dalish out of Darkness. By then, you will no longer have the green shard in your palm. By then you will be dead—or else, something different entirely._ } 

“But please, sit,” Ellathin said, gesturing to the edge of the grove behind them. Solas had already laid out a blanket. “We are almost ready to begin.”

 

 

Of all she saw that day and night—the lines of men and women in uniform, the magic in the Keep—nothing moved her so deeply as the dances of Clan Tillahnen, in the grove ringed with spruce. They _meant_ something. The Dalish had been dancing the same steps since they’d left the Dales. It was a way of remembering the old stories—a kind of immortality. Though the dancers changed, the dance never did.

The dance was percussive, as it must be: hard-driving and lightning fast, as violent as war. As expulsion from homelands once cherished. And as communal: each beat was created by the smack of ironbark on ironbark, forearms clashing against one another, dancers beating the front of their own chest plates, their fingers ringed with different materials, each that struck a different tone on the armor-dancewear. A vibrant blaze of movement, matched by shouts and bellows from the mouths of the dancers.

“This one,” Thanduwen whispered to Solas, curled in his arms, “depicts the diaspora after the fall of the Dales. But it ends happily. It says that, when all the scattered children of the Dales come together again, we will make a home for ourselves that none will take from us.”

“Are they being led by the Light-Bearer?” he asked, brushing his lips to her ear.

She snorted into his tunic, curling closer to him, pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw. She mumbled against the smooth skin, “Do not give the Keeper’s words too much thought; I am no Light-Bearer.”

“If you were,” he said, his lips brushing against her scalp, “would you know it?”

She tilted her face up to him, smiling wryly. “I think if I were, the Gods—my Gods—would tell me so.”

In response, Solas purred. 

“They might yet, _vhen’an._ They might yet.”

 

 

Later, after many bittersweet farewells, their faithful hart carried them back to the castle. All, now, was still, the moon low in its arc across the sky. Morning was not far off. Thanduwen led Solas through the castle, never releasing his hand, even as the climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She had such things planned: she wanted to unclothe him slowly; she wanted to take him into her mouth and taste him; she wanted to ride on top of him as the new day dawned, pink and yellow, its light and its warmth finding them just as they reached the height of their passion. She wanted to _thank him,_ come together with him as they had not since Adamant, but the night had been long. In the end, they had climbed into bed together, and fallen swiftly asleep.

She dreamt of a tower | _his tower_ | of seamless, milky marble, that stretched towards the sky as though it might endeavor to seize it. Within the tower, in a high chamber, there is a bed; she is stretched across it, and Solas is beside her. It is no less and no more comfortable than the bed she fell asleep in. The walls are lined in golden-green mosaics, stories and characters she cannot name.

| _She does not remember the stairs along the outside. It is difficult, now, for her to keep track of where she is when; of who she is where; of how she is here. It is easier to forget the stairs spiraling along the tower’s length, and the coldness in his eyes at its peak, and the artifact he manipulated between his hands. But I remember. And I weep to see him take her here._

_Look at him: he is staring into the distance, idly stroking her hair as she dozes, longing for a way to make the pieces fit. To keep her. Here. Both then and now._

_She could bear the light, if she chose. This he knows to be true, even if she does not believe it yet._ |

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Other Voices/Elvhen Chorus:  
> < text > Harea  
> { text } Tanaleth  
> | text | Idrilla  
> [ text in brackets ] ???
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: I'm getting into my 2018 groove! I've already made some good progress on the next three chapters, so updates should continue (somewhat) regularly. Thank you for reading! Kudos/comments always appreciated. <3


	22. Ven Lea’vune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is spring, and the great trees of the Graves (grown massive from the strength lent to them by the warriors of old who took their rest beneath those selfsame trees) shelter the groves and riverbanks below, so that beneath their shade the world is pleasant and cool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter contains passages that are NSFW

The sunlight was falling through the lofty canopy in shafts, dancing and shifting across the soft grass with each breeze that tickled the treetops as it passed. Beyond the branches, the sky was blue—though it was nice, for once, not to see so much of it. Even at its truest blue, the sky was always a reminder of the Breach; the task at hand, and her place within it.

Bt Thanduwen was hardly thinking of it that day. Breathing green, breaking the surface of the water with an easy kick and sucking down lungfuls of fresh air, thick with the fragrant smell of the first blooms of embrium and prophet’s laurel. 

It is spring, and the great trees of the Graves (grown massive from the strength lent to them by the warriors of old who took their rest beneath those selfsame trees) shelter the groves and riverbanks below, so that beneath their shade the world is pleasant and cool. 

They had set out from Skyhold with Dorian and Vivienne, aiming to cut across the wooden lowlands of the Graves and make it to Halamshiral just a few days ahead of the Bloomingtide Ball. The Civil War of Orlais had spread even here, the forest crawling with “Freemen.” And though the Graves were sparsely populated, the war was making it impossible for the nobility of Orlais to make their first pilgrimages to their “country estates.”

They would arrive in Halamshiral with the first heat of summer. According to Josephine, their arrival would be greatly celebrated if they could proclaim that the Graves had been restored to peace. Then, the Inquisition would start off the night of negotiations with an exceptional amount of goodwill—goodwill that would be needed, Josephne told her (wearing that pained face she did when she was going to say something offensive) if they hoped to counteract the stigma of Thanduwen being (after all the rumors) well and truly a Dalish elf.

Thanduwen had said something very rude and unladylike in response, but the remark had not been as pointed as it could have been. In truth, she very much desired to see the Graves for herself. (All the better if the Civil War meant there were no Orlesians—or at least, no Orlesians she could not swiftly clobber with impunity.)

In some ways it was no less difficult than cutting across Dirthaveran had been, but the Dirth at least had shame enough to look war-scorched and barren. The Graves were the precise opposite. Tree boughs, every bit as Emerald as the name of the land would suggest, stretched overhead to dizzying heights. Untroubled by the war, nuts and deer and birds of every kind grazed among the tall grass and early blooms. It was idyllic, the kind of place she would have longed to linger in, had it not been for her responsibilities. 

[ _Idly, she dreamed of returning. Not knowing yet that she would. Not knowing yet the circumstances of her return, mangled and broken soul, dispossessed of limb. Lost love,_ _lathbora viran._ _And utterly unprepared of what she would find to fill that absence._ ]

The Civil War had made the whole place seem wild and unkempt. This impression was exaggerated by the order of the estate grounds and pathways, now unattended by their stewards. Everywhere the Orlesian chateaus looked neglected and overrun: trellises overcome with ivy and swallowed under shining leaves, fountains gone green with stagnation. Wildflowers that would not have been tolerated under scrupulous attentions of the now-absent groundskeepers had taken over entire lawns, small flowers with pretty colored heads who opened their faces to the rising of the sun, and closed their petals over the when the day was done. At nighttime, the perfume of the moonflowers wafted through their camp, pleasant enough that even Vivienne (who harbored no love for the outdoors) remarked on its fragrance.

{ _And this, she knew, too: though bestrewn with statues of Andraste and memorials to the Exalted March, the Graves were the Graves after all because they were the final resting place of the Emerald Knights. Where my friends and I… or rather, where the flesh that was once mine is folded in the loving embrace of the dark earth, rocked by it. I am clasped as tightly as a dear child by the armroots of the great shaggy cypress that once grew no rounder than the circumference of my little finger. Now it towers above, clutching me tight against its heart._

_Do the trees remember, I wonder? Do they keep memories as they keep me, recalling the time when this land was home to the Knights that loved and honored them? Perhaps they pine for the wayward Dalish children just as the Clans long for them, their great boughs and generous shade._ }

Among all that untamed beauty, Solas was beside her. Since that night in the cleft of the Frostbacks, they had come together again as though no slight had ever separated them. In the evenings, they retired together. When they rose at dawn with the morning dew still clinging to the grass, the first sight that greeted her was his face.

He sat now on the riverbank with a scrap of parchment in his lap, grasping a stick of charcoal he had prepared over the previous night’s fire. In stark, black marks he detailed the scene before him: Thanduwen bathing in the Rush of Sighs, which sparkled in the afternoon sun like the scales of a sea-serpent. 

His gaze darted between the scene in front of him and the drawing he held. But when Thanduwen rose—naked, clean, glistening with Rush water—making her way across the bank towards him, the image was enough to hold his attention, to pull him away from his practice.

She is still dripping when she drops to the ground beside him, droplets of the river still clinging to her skin, winter-cold. Her hair is damp, but that does not stop her from gently collecting the drawing out of his lap and placing it on the ground beside him, and resting her head upon his thigh in its place. She stretched out the rest of her body like a cat, before settling onto the grass, faintly warmed by the afternoon sun.

Solas passed an appraising glance at her from the corner of his eye 

“While I do not find the view objectionable,” he said, the smile as audible in his voice aschimes stirred by a breeze, “one of our companions could come to collect us at a moment’s notice. Are you certain you would not like to clothe yourself?”

A noise of derision escaped her, something between a snort and a chuckle. “The sight would hardly shock either of them. Dorian would not care. And Vivienne would not see anything she’d hasn’t seen before.” Thanduwen could still recall, vividly, the time Vivienne had introduced her to her favorite dressmaker in Val Royeaux. The seamstress had insisted Thanduwen strip so that could “study her form” before drawing up a number of patterns that would best suit “the shape with which she had been endowed.” 

"If you say so, Inquisitor,” Solas replied, reaching down to stroke her damp hair idly back from her temples.

It had done something to transform Solas too, this green place. | _More likely it was their love that put that gleam in his eyes, and how it promised a triumph in partnership: still a part of him believes he can have the best of both worlds in the new one._ | It had made him more affable, easier to smile and quicker to laugh. 

Thanduwen knew there was something dangerous in the way she was coming to love him.  She knew it in the Approach, as she new it now: she acknowledged it, but did nothing to protect herself from it. Until now she had always told herself to hold no expectations of him. No matter how often they talked of the future, and what it might bring, she never expected him to promise her that he would stay. There was no talk of Bonding, or of children, or of growing old together. But here, in the Graves so full of life, it was hard for her not to believe that she would love him always. It was difficult to imagine a world in which his love for her was not equally enduring.

“Sing me something,” she asked him, spontaneously, perhaps because the beauty of the scene and the contentment on his face was so complete she thought that he might actually indulge her request. She had never heard him sing before. After all, he did not raise his voice in worship with the others to sing the Chant of Light. But she had long and secretly suspected that if ever put to the task he would sing magnificently. 

For a time he did not respond, though she did not find his silence discouraging. Then, finally, he asked her: “What would you like to hear? I'm afraid I am unfamiliar with most of the songs you would know.”

Thanduwen hummed in pleasure—his askance portended a greater victory than she had expected—and extended each of her legs in a pleasurable stretch. “I don't care,” she said, softly. “Whatever you like. In whatever tongue. I don't know. Sing something you think the trees might like to hear.”

He turned his face to the emerald above them, more brilliant then the most expensive Serrault glass in the windows of the Grand Cathedral. Nothing scattered light in such color and warmth as those ancient trees. He surveyed them for a moment… then, having found what it was he sought, [ _courage_ ] he turned his face back to Thanduwen, her head in his lap, the wet of her hair soaking through his patched breeches. Delicately he placed a hand on her head, smoothed wet hair back out of her forehead—blacker than even the coal with which he drew—and took a deep breath.

“ _Dur da’adahl bana’thai…._ ”

With her head in his lap like this, Thanduwen could feel him sing. The curve of his spine shifting with his posture as the words rose out of him, the great drawing of breath between the words. To her great surprise he sang softly, breathily, as though he were embarrassed, or self-conscious; or as though he were singing only to himself, a song hummed just under the breath. 

But this was not his song. It was her mother’s, the song of Soufei’s. He knew that, just as well as he knew the words, though she could not quite be sure _how_ he knew them. He’d only heard her sing it once—twice, perhaps—that second time around the fire in a solemn voice with Clan Lindiranae gathered around, on the barren planes of the Dirth. The promise in the song had seemed, at that time, much needed. 

Thanduwen thought he would have chosen something different, not a _Dalish_ song, though it was hardly Dalish alone. A version of the same song was sung in common, by the elves of the alienages. Still, little in this world seemed spared his cynicism and contempt. _This is how they used to sing in Elvhenan,_ she had thought he would say, and then belt out an aria in a dialect of Elvish so esoteric and formal that she wouldn’t be able to follow the words, laying in wonder as the sound-shape of it washed over her. 

[ _She does not know he has forgotten all the old songs. If the others have not kept them, they are lost, all deadened to whispers between the most ancient and somnolent spirits. The mouths that once lifted them in praise or joy are now silenced and breathless._ ]

| _By him._ |

[ _Inadvertently, it is true; but still he is to blame. And if I know him (which_ ** _we_** _do) than I know just by looking (uninvited, intruder, a trespasser on such tenderness) at his face how dearly he wished he could have given her what she had asked for: an ancient song that would stir the trees, wake the spirits lying dormant and dumb within them, muted when the Veil severed them from themselves. How he wished to give her this small part of himself, a thing that was not a lie, a song he might have once sung in supplication to the false gods or in celebration of a feast, or upon an occasion of triumph and glory. But the melodies in his heart are faint and distant, and no matter ow he calls to them, the words do not come. For he has lost much of himself—he has cast so much away._ ]

| _Raising the Veil cost him much, it is true, though the price paid by those he left to suffer that severing was far higher. This loss he carries too, an unliftable burden. But sometimes these little erasures sting worse than the losses most plainly evident. He does not know that these things are missing until he sets about looking for them and by then, it is too late. I warned him! I—_ |

{ _You did what you could._ }

[ _You did enough._ ]

What he sang instead was most unexpected—though, perhaps it should not have been. She was trying best as she could to respect the history of this place (still called the _Graves_ , at least that still stood, testament of the lives laid down, trees over Knights) and at the same time be as blissfully blind as she could to it, so that she could bask in this land’s beauty and not feel the same unbearable, crushing sadness she had felt every moment she had walked the plains of the Dirth in winter past. Solas as always was better at holding within him such contradictions: being able to enjoy the world’s grace and its surprises without forgetting its brutality, like a pit in a peach, a hollow heart of wood. 

And so it should not have surprised her as it did, to hear him singing (as her mother had once) of abandoned homes and lost loves, ransacked cities now occupied by invaders or condemned and crumbling to dust, and of the weeping of ancestors, _var lath or ha’anor duris ga dur’manaan._

But perhaps it was appropriate. To sing in acknowledgement of the thing, the people who once called the scattered ruins here “home,” and the bodies ensconced in the roots of those powerful trees, both nourishment and being nurtured: _we are the last of the Elvhen, we are here, and we know what this pilgrimage means._ Perhaps they could raise that solemn hymn to the spring air and in doing so be free, at least for the afternoon, of such weighted history.

And she could feel him singing. The swell of his spine as his ribs spread with each breath. And so she knew (before he even began his blasphemy) that something unanticipated and thoroughly _untoward_ was coming:

“ _Aron himal’manaan onharos,_ ” he sang so softly, but with those words ( _his_ words, his additions, unasked for and unwelcome) he brought his hand again to rest upon her damp locks of dark hair, “ _juvegarir elanor lathem—_ ”

“What is that?” Thanduwen asked, her expression troubled, turning onto her back to stare up into his face. So sudden was her twist that she dislodged his gentle hand; so shocked was he by her interruption that for a moment the limb simply hovered in the air, unsure, before he lowered it to a rest on her belly.

Solas blinked at her once, quickly; then again, more slowly, as he registered her poorly veiled displeasure and tried to identify its source. Deciding it was best not to try and anticipate her, he replied, tone neutral, (if perhaps a bit wary), “It is a new verse, that I wrote.”

“I didn’t know you were such a poet,” she said. (And so she must not have been too displeased; she cracked a smile at him.) Then, still smiling (through her expression was pained) she asked him, “Why did you? Add those lines?”

Again, he measured her with that unflinching stare, as if he were taking in all of her down to her details: every twitch of each facial muscle. Trying to commit it to memory, or read her face with such scrutiny that there was nothing hidden, no secrets between them. Always he was looking at her like she was a riddle but she was always there, _right there_ , willing to give him whatever he asked—he never did. _I am not an arcane mystery for you to unravel_ , she wanted to say. _My love for you is simple, and undefeatable in its plainness, its steadfast sameness; it is unchanging. And I would give you the answers you are always seeking if you would simply ask me the questions, but you never ask—_

“When you sang on the Storm Coast,” he began, swallowing thickly, “and again in the Dirth… I do not want you to feel those things. That bottomless sadness. As though history had been decided, as though there were nothing left to fight for. As though…” and here he turned away from her, looking out at the trees, surveying the forest: the once-home, the broken promise. “As though to return is beyond you, as though a home of your own was some distant thing that only your children’s children will know. I wrote those lines… to end the song with hope. For you.”

Thanduwen could not resist the impulse to reach up to touch him, so unsettled he looked. Her fingers were still lightly pruned from her soak in the Rush, chill to the touch as she stroked the line of his jaw. 

“That is very sweet. Still, I wish you had not. I appreciate the gesture, but…” and here she had to avert her gaze, and then her smile was gone, like a cloud gone before the sun. “It is difficult to endure. Words of going home, when there is no hope of it in sight. For neither myself nor my children’s children.”

“There’s hope yet,” Solas insisted, his thumb tracing an arc on her bare stomach. “None can say how this will end.”

Her eyes were fixed on the trees and the tors of granite across the Rush. “Even if all ends well—Orlais in my debt, and freedom won for the mages at last, and Corypheus slain—I do not think it will bring about the restoration of the Dales.”

“You cannot know that.” He touched her with such _tenderness_. Something else also, something withheld and pained. But if his features concealed a secret, it soon transformed, replaced with a wily mischief. “After all, if I had told you all those months ago that the person responsible for opening the Breach was a Magister from the Golden Age of Tevinter, you would not have believed me.”

She surrendered to it: his mixedmirthhopefulness. It was seductive. So often he was cynical. That he could even conceive of (and more than that, _defend_ ) a chance that the path beneath their feet—the Inquisition, the Civil War, the Elder One—could end in the restoration of the Dales… it was a vision she found difficult to resist. ( _If these woods were Our woods again. No need for aravels but still we would sleep beneath the stars. Unless—until—barefooted little ones skimming across the grass in games of chase, and afternoon lessons, and when they grow as old as I am now they’ll speak and read Elvhen better than I ever will, and at my side—dare I dream?—still, after all the long years….)_

[ _What she does not know, yet, in this memory: he speaks of a homeland but not of the Dales, of something more ancient, longer lost._ ]

She laughed to drag herself out of that fantasy. For that was what it surely was—the Orlesians would never surrender this land back to the Dalish, and it was best that she not entertain the notion. She would have to be diplomatic with the Orlesians in the coming weeks. Swan among them, adopt their mannerisms (though they would make clear, she had been assured, at every turn, that she would never be one of them) and play their foul game to _save them_ from the Elder One’s chaos, lest the countries of Thedas fall one after another like dominos. If such a disastrous future unfolded it would begin with Orlais and so, although she despised it, it was to Orlais that she must return. And it would be best not do to so with the a black stone of hatred so freshly gorged in her heart.

So she laughed. 

“Perhaps, I might have,” Thanduwen disputed, a twinkle in her eye. Back then, he had been only her _accomplice,_ when she had been so quick to fall into [ _love with_ ] him. But believe him? She was not sure. She certainly would have listened, if only to be given the opportunity to hear his voice and to be beside him. “But then again, in those days, it wasn’t me you needed to convince. And Cassandra would _never_ have believed you.”

Solas laughed in response, loud and true. “No. I suppose she would not.” 

Then he looked at her again in that measured way. All in her eyes; not wandering (as some might have) to her exposed flesh, still river-cool. “I only mean to suggest that… you should be open to surprises. There is no telling how the rest of this will unfold. And if you are at least open to the possibility, you will be more prepared to seize an opportunity if it presents itself to you, however slim the chances may be.”

Thanduwen turned her gaze skyward, stared up at the canopy beyond Solas’ face: green, dappled light. Then she raised her hand, and pondered the anchor, the split seam of flesh in her hand that bubbled and crackled. A cursed mark. It beleaguered her less now than it had in the past, but she still remembered the pain, each shock of the Breach ripping through her arm when she awoke in the mountains. There was a part of her that believed she was not really cured, not wholly; that such pain could (and would) return at any time, once the mark was no longer sated. Though more likely than not she would be dead by then. 

It was, really, an extraordinary feat of luck that she had not perished already. 

Still, no matter how many miracles (that was what the Andrastians called them, anyway) had come to pass, she could not believe the restoration of the Dales would become one of them. Too much would have to change, and too fast. The world did not move at such a pace, slow to change and even slower to right its wrongs. 

“I don’t see any possibility of that.” She turned her face to Solas, could not resist the small jab: “And you, of all people! I can’t believe you think there’s a chance, knowing what you do of the Orlesians and politics. Even if I amassed enough good faith and men to take the Dales by force—” (and on more than one occasion, that very thought had crossed her mind, though she rarely indulged it; foolish, power-mad fantasy that it was) “—the victory would not last. I doubt the borders would stand for even an Age before they were torn down.”

Solas scoffed. “Men. _Faith_. If there is hope to be had for an Elvhen kingdom, it comes not from these meager resources.” 

Thanduwen raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And where does it come from, then?”

He looked at her, then. And when their gaze me, Thanduwen could see his expression had sofened; he was looking at her no longer like a mystery but a miracle. A gift.

“From you.”

“Me?” she replied, her eyebrow climbing higher still. “I have accomplished nothing alone; though I might dream, I cannot deliver my people single-handedly. I would not be so certain of my influence if I were you.”

“I am,” he said, smugly, tilting his head. He ran a hand through her damp hair, his fingertips gliding across her scalp. “Your great deeds only begin with the Inquisition, they do not end there. Would you like to know why?”

Thanduwen only smiled at him, a look of mixed amusement and skepticism on her face.

“Because you carry the light,” he said, and his voice was softer, lower. “Clan Tilhanen, Keeper Roshin. They named you first, but it is true: you are the _Light-Bearer._ ”

Thanduwen could not say whether or not he was joking. Poking fun at the age-old hopes and myths of her people would not be out of character for him. She could only bear the look on his face for so long. Then she sat up, her back turned to him, bringing her knees up to her chest and staring out at the trees. 

Turning her head just enough to speak to him, so she could be heard, she spoke in her most serious voice. “Please do not joke about that. Especially here, of all places.”

He did not respond straight away; instead, he reached for her. She felt Solas’ hand reach out and light, gently, on her shoulder. 

“It is not a joke.”

She turned again to face him, hawkish, suspicious, but his expression was only serious, no hint of humor to be found upon it. 

“Not on your hand, but here,” he said, reaching out to her, laying his palm flat against her sternum, over her heart. “You carry an ancient flame, a wisdom I have only seen in the deepest reaches of the Fade. You…” and here his expression faltered. He swallowed; Thanduwen’s eyes caught on the notch that rose and fell along the column of his throat with the motion. 

When he turned to face her again, his expression had hardened into a look of steadfast commitment and determination, a seriousness that always managed to make his blue eyes look sharp and silver as tempered steel. His hand lifted from her sternum to her face, his palm warm against her cool cheek.

“You light my way,” he said. “You show me what is good, and wise, and just. Like a lamp that will never run short of oil; you drag me out of darkness, show me the way into the light.”

“Oh, Solas,” she sighed. She reached up to catch his hand in her own, turned it to her face to press a kiss to his palm, before guiding it back into his lap. “That is beautiful—one of the most beautiful things anyone has ever said to me. But I do not see how it could change the fate of the elves.”

“But it does,” Solas insisted, tangling his fingers with hers, holding her hand still to his thigh. “More than you know. It challenges me to dream of a future in which you are happy and free, the cultural inheritance of which you have been robbed now returned to you. You speak of a home and you do not believe it will ever be yours, but I see it. The journey will not be without trails, but there is a path that leads to that future, so bright and magnificent it will make all of his seem no more than a pale dream, already half-forgotten.”

His excitement should have been infectious, but Thanduwen did not share it. She did not trust it, this newfound enthusiasm. It was not that she did not believe he would fight for it, the chance to give her this gift. But she could not see how it would be possible, how only the two of them could accomplish so great a thing.

Her skepticism must have been clear, because Solas smiled at her patiently, shaking his head in a gentle admonishment.

“You do not believe men.”

Thanduwen could only smile in response, in contrition. “It is a difficult thing you are asking me to believe in.”

“Come,” he said, and as he did so he tugged her hand, spreading his legs, making a next for her between them. “Let me show you.”

Thanduwen was happy to acquiesce; she could hardly look at him. She knew not where this sudden romanticism, this optimism came from, but it was difficult to bear. He spoke as if by the strength of their love alone they could deliver her people, as if she could illuminate their path as well as she had (allegedly) brightened his. It was a beautiful thought, but little more than a fancy, and its beauty and its futility smarted in equal measure.

But when she climbed into the space between his legs, resting her back against his solid strength, he was warm, and she found a familiar comfort in his embrace. She let her head falling lightly against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her, his hands settling on the soft skin of her stomach.

“When this land is ours again,” he began, his breath hot against her ear, “the chateaus will be the first to fall. There will not even be time to scavenge through their halls; at our coming, the earth will swallow them.” 

His hands slid upwards along the rise of her abdomen, tracing a path to the swell of her breasts. “The only reminder that they ever stood will be the green hillocks that cover their enfolded rubble—a funereal cairn. Unmarked. In a generation their secrets will be forgotten, and the free elvhen children will give chase up and down the gentle slopes of the chateau-barrows, heedless of the vanquished empire whose remains they trod upon.” His fingers found her breasts, hills on the landscape of her body, and squeezed gently, and she hummed in pleasure; eyes closed, she could see it, the transformed Graves and the children….

"But that is only the beginning.”

“With the trespassers driven out, the forest will flourish. The spirits of the trees will come out of their slumber at the warmth of your light," he said, fingertips gliding down her stomach to the curled hair between her legs. "They will waken at the lightest touch."

A hitch of the breath—Solas' finger curled, stroked between the folds of her sex. The touch was light as it was brief, the pad of his fingertip only just brushing the bud of her clit, but that was enough to start her muscles coiling. She lifted her hips just slightly off the ground, pursuing the touch, but Solas withheld it; he laughed lightly behind her.

“What then?” Thanduwen asked, breathily. “Once they have woke.”

“You'll sing them taller, of course,” he said, and when he ran his hands up along her chest, catching a pert nipple in a pinch between forefinger and thumb as if to provoke such musical sounds, she keened. 

“Sin— _ahh,_ hmm. Sing them?"

“Oh yes,” Solas said, pressing a kiss to her ear. “They will like that very much. Under the darkness of a star-strewn sky, you will sing to them of the light you carry within you, and they will stretch, reaching their fingertips to the moon just like the tides you loved as a child. And within a year they will be taller than the towers of Skyhold, and we will walk the heights among their crowns, and see our new kingdom stretched green and vast below.”

“There will be peace here,” he sighed against her ear. “We will remake it, mold it into what it should have been from the beginning. A place of wild beauty and bounty, without hunger, or thirst, or sickness.”

“See the little ones run through the tall grass, bare feet tickled by each blade,” and his finger was gliding along her sex in earnest now, slick with the wetness of her arousal. “They are safe and unafraid, beyond the reach of Templars and Chevaliers, beyond the reach of humans. They are ours—all of them, each youngling—for though we did not bear them we gave them this gift.”

His finger dipped lower, seeking entrance.

“They call you _mother._ ”

Solas pressed his finger inside of her; Thanduwen closed her eyes and pressed backwards against him, twisting, angling her hips to permit his finger deeper access to the heat pooling in the cradle of her hips. Her heels dug into the thick, rich clay that lined the river’s edge.

“Tell me more,” she said, breathlessly, bucking her hips to meet his palm. “Tell me _how._ ”

He hummed behind her—she could feel the vibration of his chest against her bare back—and pressed another kiss to her ear, followed by a sharp nick of his teeth.

“ _No._ ”

She laughed—the laugh falling into a low groan as his finger curled inside of her, seeking out the nerves that, once found, would have her crying loud enough that their companions back at camp might hear her. Thanduwen could feel herself tightening around him, thighs trembling—but she could also feel him behind her, the pressure in his trousers against her lower back. Gently, she took ahold of his wrist, pulled his hand out of and away from her. 

When she turned to look at him, he was amused, quizzical, but more than either of those things his eyes had gone lidded with a drunken, lazy sort of desire. She knew then she could have pulled him down to the ground beside her, and he would need to do little beyond pull his trousers a few inches down his waist, and then they would join in a heady lovemaking. But she did not want him here, on the shore.

She tugged his wrist gently—an invitation, a command—then walked back to the Rush, flashing a cheeky look at him over her shoulder as the river water swallowed her.

Solas watched her sink into the water until she was shoulder-deep, drinking in the sight of her until the river hid it from him. Then he rose to follow, pulled his cotton tunic over his head, leaving him in his sleeveless undershirt, his breeches, his leg wrappings; but each of these fell with slow and torturous succession until he too was bare, pursuing her to the river. 

He looks so... glorious. Statuesque, as if he were another remnant of the Dales, the well-defined strength of his thighs and shoulders carved out of enduring, brilliant marble. Thanduwen has never been envious of his artistic talent, but in that moment, she wished she could draw just as well as he: that she could record and preserve the sight of him on the riverbank, the trees melting away, bare suggestions behind him. He stole her focus. And something about how his beauty overtook her, and the solid set of his shoulders, the near-predatory lope of his gait as he made his way towards her—and she believed him, then. If anyone could help her turn the Dales into the paradise he'd described, it was him. He had the vision, and the commitment, the resolve. If she carried the light than he carried something else: a secret, an unnameable and unstoppable force. 

But it is too much, too beautiful. Almost terrifying and unbearable, how perfect and potent he looks, ankle deep. She can't resist; lightning quick, fast enough that he doesn't see it coming, she breaks the waters surface with the flat of her hand and sends a mighty spray of spring cold river water crashing over his thighs, his chest. 

It breaks the spell. 

Solas yelped in surprise, froze in place, body tense against the river’s chill; and the transformation is so sudden (he looks so _undignified,_ dripping wet) that Thanduwen can’t help but laugh. He is so _alive_ like that. And then he looks at her, head tilted, shaking (a warning glance) and then he brings his hands over his head, bends, and dives full into the current. _Lunges_ for her. 

She led him on a chase among the eddies and river stones. He caught her at last against a boulder near the far bank, made love to her against the rough rock, and in the end the force of it left them clutching one another and trembling, laughing lightly as the river carried all evidence of the act downstream. 

Later Dorian would find them curled around one another, fast asleep, dreaming of the very trees under which they lay, and what they might one day become. _Daughters._

It was enough in that lazy afternoon to make her believe it would always be as if was then. That Solas would love her, and she would love him in return. A goal in the horizon: the life they might share, altering the world to suit them, bringing her people to a freedom. _Lathbora viran_. Even if no such promises had been made with words she could feel that future in the way he held her after. Their promises at Griffin Wing, _We will alter the very stars_. 

[ _Did not know then, as she will later, that it would not last. That such a comfort could be turned to a pain. That he would leave her._  ]

| _Abandon her in pursuit of his heinous designs._  |

{ _Never suspecting that their visions of the world they were fighting for the world she wanted to live in diverged so wholly from his. Having hoped (vainly) that if she loved him enough her people might too become his. Having suspected (falsely) that it was already beginning to happen: Ellathin dancing in the cleft of the mountains, and Fen’Harel, warm by her side._ }

| _And wishing, even later, once she knew the truth, that he had allowed her to stand beside him in his bloody conquest. Wishing this even though it shamed her._ |

Later, she would say this was the happiest she had ever been, the birds all atwitter and the sparkling watersun, and making love to Solas in the green, vibrant Dales.

[ _Years later, when she is dying in his arms, he will tell her: "I almost told you there. How deeply I loved you then, with the river water gleaming in your hair, your pleasure cries swallowed up in the emerald canopy, and the way you looked at me, like you'd lay the world at my feet if I asked. Before I asked. I almost, almost told you there how it really was.”_ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OTHER VOICES:  
> [ ] ???  
> < > Harea  
> { } Tanaleth  
> | | Idrilla
> 
>  
> 
> TRANSLATIONS:
> 
> Dur da’adahl bana’thai. | Under the blackberry vine. Literally, “Under the little tree of black fruit,” my very rough translation of “under the blackberry vine.”
> 
> Var lath or ha’anor duris ga dur’manaan. | Our love for this ancient land is deeper than the deepest sea.
> 
> Aron himal’manaan onharos / Juvegarir elanor lathem | Like the turning of a great tide, we are returning to our home.
> 
> Ven Lea’vune | River of Moonlight
> 
> All my thanks and credit to fenxshiral for their work on Project Elvhen.


	23. Halamshiral, Then and Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halamshiral! The little that lingers of that place, Jewel of my Heart, does not do it justice. The wall now crumbling once washed in resplendent lime, so that as one approached (as I approached, a Knight, her Defender, returning after a lengthy patrol of the borderlands) the wall shined, brilliant and white on the plain. And on approach those guards that kept watch would wave and cheer in greeting, and the great doors (for there was no gate in those days, no reason to fear trespassers, for our Promise had been made with blood and was thought to be eternal) would swing open, their mosaics glittering as the spell that sealed them yielded to Dalish touch, and inside, ahhh, the whole great pulsing city. The homeland. Halamshiral!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: implied fantasy drug use

To quarter their people, Empress Celene had granted the Inquisition a block of adjacent rooms in the East Wing of the Winter Palace. Outside their gilded doorways stretched a long hall, lit brilliantly by the summer light that fell through tall and narrow Orlesian windows. Beyond their panes rolled the green fields to the southeast, just outside the palace walls. The hall was lined with divans and lavish, plush chairs, all upholstered in finely embroidered fabrics, from which one could survey the view. 

Upon exiting her room, Thanduwen froze—for Josephine sat in one of the chairs, directly in her path.

Thanduwen paused, _breathed_ , reasoned with herself, trying will her feet into movement. Josephine had no reason to police her behavior. (This was a lie.) The ambassador was probably so preoccupied with diplomatic meetings and arrangements that she would care little about how Thanduwen chose to occupy her time before the ball officially commenced. (Also a lie.) It was most likely that Thanduwen would stride right past and Josephine would not even take note of her. 

(Most definitely not true.)

Thanduwen straightened her posture (willing it into some semblance of confidence), clasped her hands behind her back, and continued down the narrow hall. She regretted, now, changing into her traveling clothes; no doubt that made her more conspicuous, as they were thoroughly unfit for exploring the halls of the Winter Palace. But she could see Josephine more clearly now, and the writing tablet she was laboring over. Perhaps, if she was so engrossed with her work—

“Inquisitor.”

Thanduwen was hardly three feet from where Josephine sat when she heard the Josephine call after her, her crisp Antivan enunciation unmistakeable. Thanduwen winced, but by the time she had spun around to face the ambassador, she had transformed her features into a smile.

“Good afternoon, Ambassador. Are you enjoying your stay at the Winter Palace?”

Josephine raised an eyebrow, and gave Thanduwen a look of skepticism that was so incisive it was nearly scathing _._ Then, she sighed. “As much as I am pleased to be back in Orlais, I am afraid ‘enjoyment’ is… a little out of the question, at this stage. Though the negotiations have not officially begun, there is still plenty of work to attend. Tonight, I have been invited to dine with the Council of Heralds; they would be most honored if you would join us. While I cannot demand your attendance,” Josephine continued, smoothing her hands the red trousers of her uniform, “I recommend you make yourself available. If handled with tact and decorum, a familiarity with the Council will prove useful in laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s negotiations.”

Thanduwen nodded along, tried her best to look as if she were weighing the possibility of dinner with the Orlesian nobles. In truth—much like the fox she and her brother had failed to catch when they were children—she would rather gnaw off her own leg than be caught in that particular trap.

“Actually, Josephine, I was thinking of taking a walk outside the palace,” Thanduwen confided, trying to keep her tone as casual as possible. “While we are here, in Halamshiral, I was hoping to see the walls of the old city.”

Josephine’s eyes narrowed. “And this will occupy the remainder of your afternoon, into the night?”

Thanduwen shrugged. “Possibly. It was a… large wall.”

“Is Solas not joining you?” 

Thanduwen liked Josephine, for the most part, and so she knew that the ambassador had not intended the question to sting. It did. Still, though she felt slightly abandoned by him (he had said he was going to speak with some of the servants _hours_ ago and still had not returned) she was in no hurry to rat him out. If Josephine knew he was walking the grounds on his own, she would not like it—a “servingman,” unattended, with no one to serve, could arouse unnecessary suspicion. She’d worry the rest of the night until she knew he was not getting them into any trouble. 

“He said something about the Grand Library, I think,” Thanduwen replied, adding a shrug she hoped was convincing. “I’m sure he’ll return soon, but I wanted to get an early start at it.”

“At your… wall viewing.”

“…Yes.”

Josephine’s fingers tapped around the back of the writing tablet thoughtfully, her gold rings clacking against the wood. She regarded Thanduwen with her discerning gaze, looking wholly unconvinced that this excursion would not end in some kind of diplomatic disaster. (If Thanduwen was being honest with herself, Josephine was probably right to be cautious.) 

But in the end, she simply sighed, turned her gaze back to the parchment.

“Take Commander Cullen with you.”

“Take me where?” Cullen asked from further down the hall. Thanduwen had been so concerned with getting past Josephine she hadn’t yet noticed him.

“I am sorry,” Thanduwen said, closing her eyes, smiling. “I’m… a little confused. Since when have I needed a chaperone?”

Josephine sighed, a weary sound, and gave Thanduwen her most imploring look. “Inquisitor, I have no doubt that you are perfectly capable of navigating the city on your own. But Leliana’s bards have already heard whispers of assassination plots, and other bloody machinations that are all but a national pastime here. We have not seen any attempts on your life—not _yet_ —but we must err on the side of caution, I am afraid. We are in Orlais, after all, and there are many here who would love nothing more than to see you fail.”

“Josephine!” Thanduwen pleaded. “After everything we’ve been through— _I’ve_ been through—do you really think I can’t handle an assassin?”

“Without making a spectacle of yourself? No, I do not. And no, before you ask, I do not think Commander Cullen is any better equipped to handle such a threat. However, with him at your side, I do think any would-be assassin would be less inclined to _try._ ”

Thanduwen huffed, folding her arms over her chest. She could tell by the set of Josephine’s face that this was an argument she was not going to win.

By now, Cullen had risen from his chair, and was standing beside her. He gave a sidelong glance at Thanduwen’s travel clothes. “Should I, ahh. Would you like me to change?”

He was wearing the uniform of the Inquisition: all conspicuous Chantry red and royal blue. An _eyesore_. Thanduwen appraised him, then sighed in defeat. 

“No, the uniform will be fine. Come on, Commander. I hope you’ve already broken in those shiny new boots.”

 

 

| _Before the quicklings called it the Dales—or Dirthavaren—or Halamshiral—it went by a different name. I knew it well, for it was part of Mythal’s Kingdom, and since from my birth to her death, I lived in her service._ |

[ _And after the fall of Arlathan, the elves returned to their Mother’s bosom, though now it went by a different name. The Dales._

 _Privately, I have always thought this could not be a coincidence, though it has never been proven._ ]

| _You are probably correct in that; most often ‘coincidence’ is what we call a confluence we have no other name for. Though in those days no temples nor observatories graced the ground that became Halamshiral. Mother to All Things, Mythal had formed the land to make it a pleasure garden for all of her Children: the huntress and the hunted, predator and prey, the game of Andruil and the creations of Ghila’nain both. The Child of the Dales has seen the places now called the “Arbor Wilds” and the “Emerald Graves” and marveled at the wonder and beauty of each, but the place that later took the name “Halamshiral” would have put both places to shame. The trees stretched to the very sky, a hall of boughs beneath which sweet music or poetry could often be heard in the evening. At each moon (which heralded the Mother’s coming, for the moon is her creation) the trees stretched higher, green fingertips reaching for her the way an infant’s chubby hands grasp for the arms of their mother._

 _I spent many days there. Fen’Harel knew the place, too. After Mythal’s murder, he wandered it, inconsolable and alone. It is said that it was among these trees that he first began his planning, seeing the way the treetops reached for the sky, or held it, away and back. They drove him to think what he might too withhold from those who had wronged the All-Mother._ |

< _Before my people left the Imperium, the Dales had no name: abandoned, empty wilderness on the fringes of the continent. But I had not the pleasure of setting my eyes upon it while I yet lived. I was dead long before the homecoming, before the Long Walk had even begun._ >

[ _But you saw it, later, through the eyes of another. And you felt what it meant._ ]

< _When she cried, she cried for all of us. If she had let us but linger in that moment, the relief and the joy of the homecoming, we might have wept a river to irrigate the lands they had arrived at. A home, at last!_ >

~ _A home you fought for. A home I would never have seen had it not been for the sacrifice and bravery of you and your brother both._ ~

{ _A once-home: now usurped, stolen. Bricked over garishly with the trappings of this cruel Empire._ }

 

 

They had some trouble locating the old wall. Thanduwen had mistakenly thought this would be easy but, as it happened, centuries of urban sprawl and new construction had left the wall difficult to uncover. In some parts of the city, it had been swallowed into the surrounding buildings entirely. What once had been the outer wall of Halamshiral, Heart of the Dales, was here sometimes the rear wall of a butcher shop, or running straight through a ruinous warehouse, or the outer limit of a corral for livestock—or so crumbled and broken, like a mouth devoid of half its teeth, that it hardly looked like a wall at all. Large sections of it had been deliberately demolished in the ensuing years, the building blocks pillaged and carried away and cannibalized by other structures. Where once there had been ramparts, citadels, and gates, now there was only a dilapidated wall, ruined and incongruous.

In truth, it was well-concealed largely because the architectural features that surrounded it looked no better off: not newer, and certainly not more structurally sound. The cobbled streets were deeply pocked and uneven, and looked as though they had not been repaired in an Age. Outside the High Quarter—where the nobility and the entirety of Halamshiral’s small human population lived—the streets grew narrower and dirtier. Not long after crossing through the gates of the High Quarter, Cullen’s boots were so covered in mud and filth that it was difficult to believe they were brand new. 

Thanduwen and Cullen had attracted some stares; it did not surprise her, for they made a curious looking pair. Though Cullen’s uniform was unfamiliar to Halamshiral’s elves (he was clearly no chevalier) it had an air of authority about it that spelled _trouble_. Perhaps, had he been alone, he would have cleared the streets, windows shuttered, heads down. But as much as city elves were wary of him, they were equally apprehensive of Thanduwen. They knew she was Dalish by the marks on her face, and though no one was short with her, no one welcomed her, either. Most likely they did not know what to make of the pair of them: the Dalish elf and the Ferelden soldier.

They only found the wall when Thanduwen—finally, frustrated—had stopped to ask for directions, though this too was more difficult than she would have believed. None of the elves would so much as look at Cullen, averting their eyes and crossing the street to get away from him. If they passed an occasional glance at Thanduwen, it was more out of uncertainty; clearly none of them knew what to make of her, nor what new turmoil her coming might herald. 

Finally, after they found themselves in a quarter dominated by leatherworkers (and steadily losing their ability to withstand the smell of that particular work) Thanduwen had accosted a tanner stretching skins outside his shop. The city elf had given her a wide-eyed look, regarding the blue lines of her vallaslin with mixed wonder and caution, then directed her, hastily, four blocks north and two due west. He had been unwilling to help… but in the end, he was more eager to be rid of her and her _shemlen_ companion than he was frightened.

Four blocks north and two due west, they located the wall.

Here, it hardly reached to Thanduwen’s shoulders, but it was unmistakeable, more ancient than anything around it. It was pocked, still bearing the holes that had once supported the scaffolding from when the wall had been, built four stories high. The mortar was receding, and the sand colored bricks had been worn smooth with age at their edges, but it was all that remained here of the outer wall of Halamshiral.

As soon as they had come upon it, Cullen had loudly excused himself, crossing the street to sample the wares of a weaver. Cullen, she knew, had no interest nor knowledge of tapestry nor cloth; he had done this for her benefit, that she might have a moment of privacy. As she watched him cross the street she was flushed with a gratitude so full she felt she was vibrating with it, but then she turned away, clearing all thought of him from her mind as she lay her hands upon the wall.

{ _Halamshiral! The little that lingers of that place, Jewel of my Heart, does not do it justice. The wall now crumbling once washed in resplendent lime, so that as one approached (as I approached, a Knight, her Defender, returning after a lengthy patrol of the borderlands) the wall shined, brilliant and white on the plain. And on approach those guards that kept watch would wave and cheer in greeting, and the great doors (for there was no gate in those days, no reason to fear trespassers, for our Promise had been made with blood and was thought to be eternal) would swing open, their mosaics glittering as the spell that sealed them yielded to Dalish touch, and inside, ahhh, the whole great pulsing city. The homeland. Halamshiral! Though my forge was not in the capital, and as a Knight I came there rarely (having dedicated my life to the solemn duty of protecting her) I loved it above all other places. And my love for it was sturdy as steel within me, the hardened edge that kept me vigilant._ }

When Thanduwen had her communion, her whispered prayers and invocations to her Creators concluded, she suggested to Cullen they continue to walk along the wall’s length, and see where it led them. The afternoon was still young, after all, and Thanduwen had no intention of returning to the Winter Palace in time for dinner with the Council of Heralds. Cullen (hoping to avoid much the same fate) had agreed. 

By now it had become clear that their presence in the lower quarters was not welcome—or, in the least, that they were feared by those they passed. When they happened through a residential quarter, Thanduwen could hear shutters closing behind them, hiding homes from their eyes. She wished sorely then that she had found Solas in time. He did not have the same look as the city elves—there was something in his features that set him apart—but at least he was not a _shemlen_ , and he would have had better sense than to parade through the city in his military garb. Cullen was doing his best, and for that she was grateful, but there was no hiding who and what he was. 

 

 

Thanduwen wished to see more of the alienage. After all, Clan Lavellan now resided within the walls of the alienage of Wycome. When she had sent them there—into the heart of the very city that had sought to destroy them—Fiona had called Clan Lavellan _her_ people, claimed them as her own though she was a city elf herself. And as Thanduwen had fought for the safety and wellbeing of Clan Lavellan, so too did she wish to defend the elves of Wycome and even Halamshiral with the same uncompromising ruthlessness. But to do that she ought to make an effort to understand city life better than she did, and she thought that seeing more of the alienage in what had once been the capital of the Dales was a good way to start. She and Cullen had decided to visit the _vhen’adahl_ —the heart of the Halamshiral alienage—but thus far had been unable to find it. 

But just as Thanduwen was contemplating returning to the Winter Palace, Cullen leaned close to her, whispered in her ear as inconspicuously as he could: “Don’t look now, but I think we are being followed.”

Thanduwen looked at him in confusion. For such an foreboding omission, his voice was far too full of amusement. Then, as covertly as she could, she passed her gaze over her shoulder.

There was the briefest flash—something small darted out of the street behind them, into the cover of a narrow alley. 

Thanduwen laughed lightly, turned forward again. “Well, we were bound to attract some attention. What with you dressed brighter than a Saturnalia decoration.”

“I did ask you,” Cullen reminded her, “if you wished for me to change.”

“Into what?” Thanduwen laughed. “Did you bring your Templar gear with you? Surely you wouldn’t have walked the streets of Orlais without any armor at all? No, this is better. Marginally less frightening, I think, than whatever else you might have brought with you.” 

Then she smiled, despite herself, keeping her gaze fixed forward. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Cullen asked, tilting his head to try and catch the sound.

“There’s two of them,” she said, her eyes fixed as her ears strained. “Two sets of footsteps following us.” Then her eyes caught sight of something ahead, and she wrapped her hand around his arm, pulling him forward, “Come on.”

She dragged him to a fruit cart, laden with the bounty of the Orlesian heartlands. She untied her purse from her waist, handed the vendor a few bright bronze coins, and relieved him of two apples. Then she turned, surveying the street behind them.

There was no sign of their pursuers. Still, Thanduwen took a few tentative steps forward. “An’eth ara, da’len!” she called in welcome. “We won’t hurt you. Come show us your faces!”

Two eyes spied on her from the mouth of a nearby alley, but just as soon as Thanduwen met them, they vanished. Even down the street, Thanduwen could hear the high voices of the children, hissing in disagreement. She turned to Cullen.  
  
“Wait here, just a moment,” she said, quietly. “I think they’re probably frightened of you. I’m sure most of the humans in uniform they meet are not kind to them.”

Cullen obliged; Thanduwen crept towards the alley, hushing her steps on the cobbled stones the same way she would in a forest. When she rounded the corner of the alley, she saw not one but two small elfin faces—siblings, by the similarity of their features—staring up at her in surprise.

“Hello,” she said. “You are not very good at hiding, do you know that?”

The two children eyed her, skeptical, cautious. The smaller child—younger, she thought, perhaps no more than five years old—looked at her curiously, unable to take her eyes off Thanduwen’s face, tracing the lines of her vallaslin. The older child was more suspicious, and held his arms tightly around his younger sister, as though Thanduwen might make to seize her and carry her off.

After a tense moment of silence—the children did not respond to her, but they did not run away either—Thanduwen knelt, offering the fruit to the younglings. “My friend and I are unfamiliar with the city. I’m embarrassed to say, we’re a bit lost. When I saw you behind us, I thought you might help us find our way around.”

“He is a _shemlen_ ,” the older boy hissed. “He is not your friend.”

The boy’s reaction had been as immediate, and his tone was hostile, but Thanduwen smiled. “Technically, you’re right. He’s not really my friend. He’s kind of like my employee. My bodyguard, if you like. I promise he won’t hurt you. He won’t do anything, unless I ask.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion; it almost seemed that he found the prospect of Cullen being her employee more improbable than the idea of a friendship existing between them. “Prove it,” he challenged her, his arms still tight around his sister.

“Smart boy,” Thanduwen praised him, then twisted her waist, sticking her torso just far enough out of the alley to catch sight of Cullen. “Cullen!” she shouted. “Stand on one leg and hop up and down!”

Cullen passed her a look of confusion, but she met it with one of adamant insistence; after a moment, he hopped once, twice, thrice on his left leg. (The city elves walking down the street passed him a disapproving look, and crossed to the other side of the street to give the strange _shemlen_ a wider berth.)

Convinced, for now, the younger child took the apple Thanduwen offered, taking a great, crunching bite of it. Mouth still full of apple flesh, she asked, “Why does a Dalish warrior need a _shemlen_ bodyguard?”

“Well,” said Thanduwen, easing off her glove, “I am not really any Dalish warrior.” 

In the dimness of the alley, with its high walls, the anchor sparkled. 

Their demeanor changed at once. The older boy’s suspicion yielded to wonder. “You are her! The Inquisitor!”

“That’s me,” she said, winking, pulling her glove back over her hand to conceal the anchor once more. “Who are the two of you, then?”

“I’m Corinne,” the girl said, straining against her brother’s arms. “My brother is Remy.”

But Remy, now that he knew who Thanduwen really was, had little interest in pleasantries. “They say you chased the Freemen out of the Graves!” Remy continued, wide-eyed. “That you’ve killed a dragon!”

Thanduwen’s eyes were twinkling. “Actually,” she said, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially between the three of them, “I’ve killed _four_ dragons.” She added, as though it were an afterthought, “But I’m afraid for all the dragon slaying, I’m still pretty terrible at getting around in cities. So I was hoping you might show us to the alienage’s _vhen’adahl_. I would very much like to see it.” 

As she spoke, she untied her purse strings once more. Then, pulling out two bright coins, she told the children, “If you help me, I can give you two gold pieces each: one before we leave, and one once you’ve taken me there.” She held the coins aloft for the children to inspect.

Corinne seized the coin at once, hardly able to close her tiny fist around it. Her brother hesitated; even once he had taken it, Remy turned the coin over in his hand, measuring its weight.

“Why does a Dalish want to see our silly old tree?” he said, almost disdainfully. “You have loads better trees on your homeroads. You won’t like it.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I will. But my family is currently living with the city elves in Wycome, and I think it will make me miss them less if I can sit under it for a little while. Will you take me?”

 

 

Even with the promise of gold, Remy seemed reluctant. Though he may have been awed by her presence, her title, her legend, all of that made him no less eager to lead them into the heart of the alienage, but he yielded to his younger sister. 

The two children walked a few paces ahead. Occasionally, Corinne would turn back to make sure Thanduwen and Cullen were keeping pace; her consideration made Thanduwen smile.

They led them along a winding way, a path Thanduwen would never have taken on her own, through narrow alleys and around corners, keeping them out of sight of most of the traffic in the alienage. Her heart sank when Thanduwen realized this was probably so that they could keep hidden from the chevaliers and nobles who needed the wider streets for their carriages. 

She supposed, in a way, it was not so different from the same caution that the Dalish taught their young.

She had not seen any elven children since the Exalted Plains, months ago, and at their age, there was little to distinguish them from the children she had met in Clan Lindiranae. They were, perhaps, a bit smaller—skinnier—and more wary of her than those _da’len_ had been, but they were still undeniably beautiful children. Thanduwen loved them at once.

And because they were beautiful—even with their dirtied faces, their scraped knees, and their knives dancing from their belts (too big, Thanduwen noted, for the children to even wield properly)—Thanduwen made the mistake of believing that the afternoon might end beautifully, too. She would spend the last light under the boughs of the _vhen’adahl_ , looking upon it with wonder and reverence, and she would share the old stories with the city children. In the end, she thought, she would return to the palace under cover of nightfall, well past dinner, and altogether less agitated than she would have been had she accepted the invitation of the Council of Heralds.

But that was not to be.

When she first noticed the smell, she assumed they were entering the blacksmith’s quarter. Surely that was the logical explanation for the pervasive odor of burnt wood and soot that saturated the air. But even as the smell grew thicker, the streets remained quiet; over the bartering of merchants and the rolling wheels of wagons, she strained her ears, seeking the pounding of anvils, the shaping of iron. But these sounds did not come. 

Still Corinne and Remy leapt ahead, undeterred, and if they were unperturbed, perhaps she should not be. After all, this was their home. But as they led the way between the labyrinthine alleys, past dead-ends and through streets so narrow Thanduwen would not have even noticed them) she still sought an explanation. The charred smell kept growing stronger until she would have sworn her nostril hairs were curling in response. This was no simple hearthfire. Were the city elves burning their refuse? What else could it be?

The children led them into a passage that could hardly be called an alley, little more than a gap between two tall buildings. It was so narrow that Cullen, broad as he was, had to turn himself sideways and shimmy along the path that their nimbler guides had charted. But when they crawled out of the narrow, squeezed passage and found themselves in Halamshiral’s oldest quarter, the source of the smell became clear. 

Thanduwen stopped dead in her tracks. Felt… faint. So shocked and pained by what she saw that for a moment she forgot to breathe, her body swaying and staggering so that Cullen reached out from behind her to place a steadying hand upon her shoulder.

What once had been a crowded market square had been made wider by a destruction so thorough it had left little standing. Many of the buildings—once homes, or shops—had been utterly leveled, only the lines of their foundations left to suggesting anything had ever stood upon that ground. 

And what been it left behind? Twisted and heat-warped iron, blackened to a crisp. Sunken beams, their surface bubbled. Scorched posts like fingers of the damned, reaching up from the void through the crust of the earth to claim the living. Earthenware, cracked and caked. In one lot all that remained was the great tower of a once-hearth, a tower of crumbling scorched brick, the only thing that had survived the blaze.

What structures now stood around the market square were newly constructed. Repurposed crate wood (what sound wood had been left) had been cobbled together, a poorly insulated shelter against the elements. Many of the ‘homes’ had little more than a tarp stretched across the top of their precarious walls to serve as a roof.

And the air—dry, ashy. In the square a pair of city elves were even now sweeping up piles of white ash, still blowing from the rubble, like snow in summer.

But hardest to bear for Thanduwen—though it was only symbolic—was the sight of the _vhen’adahl_ , now no more than an empty husk in the market square. As was the habit of oaks—strong even in death!—the inside had burned hottest and brightest, hollowed out the tree from within until all that remained of it was a hardened carapace, marbled black and bone-smooth white where the elements had worn away the scorched bark. Its branches were stubby and stunted, and from those limbs hung the warped and scorched tokens that had once adorned the tree when it was alive and cherished, colorful ribbons now charred grey. 

Remy was looking at her with a look of resignation, the expression far too weary and cynical to be worn on a face so young. “I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”

For a moment all she could do was look at him, open-mouthed, useless, her eyes darting between his sharp, young eyes and the destruction around them. Finally, she managed, more weakly than she would have liked, “What happened here?”

Remy glanced at Cullen, then back at Thanduwen. “The Empress.” Then his stare hardened; he held out his hand, expectantly. 

But Thanduwen hardly noticed. She had brought her hands to cover her mouth; one of them slid along her neck, tightened at her throat. Too numb to move, to think; only enough strength in her to tremble. She took off, into the square, peering down the streets that led to its center, hoping to catch sight of something in the distance that was not scorched to a crisp. She needed to know. How much? How far did it go? 

How much of Halamshiral had the _shemlen_ leveled—again?

{ _burned as it had been during the Exalted March: a black cinder._ }

Behind her and beyond her perception, Cullen hastily fished into his coin purse and pressed the promised fee into Remy’s hand. Gold secured, Remy took off across the square without a second look back. Thanduwen was not looking. She was running, dashing like a fool around the square for some sign—any sign—of—what? She did not rightly know. 

And all she could think: that she had come here to _save_ the person responsible.

How easily this could be Wucome. How would she know the difference? The nobles had wanted to teach the elves a lessen, to put them in their place—always the first to be suspected, and the easiest to punish without fear of reprisal. No justice. And if Empress Celene had set the blaze—it could not simply have been just a fire. 

In Thanduwen’s mind she saw the vision of her brother that had come to her in the Fade: Drohan, bloodied, punctured—how many had perished? _This was the stuff of her night terrors_. Nobles of Wycome marching through the alienage, a terror of shining armor and sharp blades and strong horses stepping on the fallen, the cracking of bones. She had seen her family fighting, failing—for what was iron bark against steel?—falling, the streets run red not with lyrium but blood, and the _screaming_ —

“Thanduwen. _Thanduwen._ ”

She jumped at Cullen's touch, his hand coming down on her shoulder. It broke the spell—the vision passed, but the terror lingered. She turned to Cullen, her eyes wide, her mouth open. 

And slowly, she came back into her body. Reached up to her shoulder to take his hand—warm—and squeeze it tightly, as though she were drowning, a lifeline, her other hand clutched uselessly in the front of her shirt—eyes wide with comprehension, glistening, wet. Whispered,

“ _I can’t do this._ ”

He looked at her for a moment—and she looked so _pitiful_ , so different from how he normally perceived her, indestructible and fiery—and Cullen did not know what to do, how to comfort her. For all the time they had spent together, it had always been about her soothing him, not the other way around. He so wanted to reassure her, but he did not know how, or if, she wanted to be reassured.

His hand slid from her shoulder, brushing her arm. "This must be difficult for you," he said, quietly. "But you needn't stay. We can return to the palace—“

“No, no, not that,” she was quick to reply. “Being here, I can—I have to.” Over his shoulder she was aware of a crowd gathering in the market square, adults coming out of their desecrated homes, whispering to one another as they cast suspicious glances in her direction. “It's that—we came here to save _her_. The woman who did all this. And I don't know if I can, I—I’m not sure I should.” Quieter, she added, “I don't know if I want to—I don’t.”

Cullen looked at her carefully. She knew the weight of her words—by now he knew her well enough to know she did not use them carelessly. But what she was talking about was... a very serious matter. He was fairly certain it could be qualified as treason. 

“Then we should stay,” he said, hushing his voice. “If we speak with them, we can find out why. If there was good cause—”

“ _What cause,_ ” she hissed through her teeth, cutting him off, “do you think would come close to justifying this reaction? She has taken their homes; I am sure she has slain many among them. No, Cullen. Whatever 'reasons' she may have had, I highly doubt they will make me more sympathetic to her cause." 

Aah, but anger, Cullen was familiar with. He had seen her angry, seething, furious; this, at last, was something he understood. Thanduwen brought her hands to her forehead, smoothing at her temples. “Gods, I hate it here,” she said, and he knew she was speaking not of the alienage, but the whole of Orlais. 

“I know,” Cullen replied. “I hate it too. But we came here with good cause. And if we make a fuss now, we’ll be thrown out before the ball starts, and you won’t be able to change anything.”

She barked, a terrible humorless laugh. “Oh, just you _wait,_ Cullen. Tomorrow night…” but what she meant by that Cullen did not find out, for she was interrupted by a shrill, jubilant cry from across the market square. 

“The Inquisitor is here!”

They both turned at once to the sound; it seemed that someone among the gathered crowd had at last figured out who the strangers in the center of their alienage were. From across the market square a group of children was rushing towards them. They were just as dirtied and pitiful looking as Remy and Corinne had been, but their excitement shined past all other outward appearances. A couple of elves—their mothers, perhaps?—made to stop them, to hold them back from this strange Dalish _tor’vhen_ who had wandered into their home, but few succeeded; many wriggled past their mother’s grasping arms, dashing across the square towards Thanduwen and Cullen. 

Cullen marveled—Thanduwen’s expression changed at once. All of her sorrow and anger dissipated from her features, swept away as easily as debris in a fast moving stream, replaced by a look of joy and welcome. She bent at the knees to meet them, crouching at their level with her arms open. 

The children were all wonder and questions, so eager they were speaking over each other, clamoring for her attention. 

“Did you really close the Breach?” “Did Mythal send you?” “Will you show us the mark?”

The children encircled her; Cullen stood off to the side as Thanduwen pulled off her glove—slowly, for dramatic effect—and revealed the anchor to the gathered crowd. The sight was met with an awed coo, before tiny hands began to reach for hers, drawing her palm closer to their faces so they could better inspect the mark. 

Thanduwen was enamored with the children, but it did not escape Cullen’s notice that the adults had joined the children, and they looked far less pleased. They looked like lions, Cullen thought, appraising a potential threat to their pride; Cullen resisted the urge to reach for the hilt of his sword.

“What does it taste like? Can I lick it?”

Thanduwen laughed. “Better not. I don't think it would hurt you, but I can't say for sure, so let's not take any chances.” 

“Inquisitor. Inquisitor?" There was a small child at her side, tugging insistently at her vest. Thanduwen turned and favored the little girl with a warm smile. 

“Yes, _da’len_?"

“Inquisitor, are you here to save us, like you did the Clan in the Plains?”

At once it became so silent in the market square that even the drop of a pin would have been audible.

She wanted to say, _yes_. Oh Creators, how she wanted to. But she did not know how. She was, in that instant, so ashamed of herself; she knew so little about what the alienage would need, or how best to provide it. She was ashamed that she had not _known already,_ before she had come here, what she would find. (How had Leliana, Josephine—how had they failed to mention this?)

But even if she had known what to say, if she already had a plan of action for how to remedy this travesty, she could not say anything now. Even in the light of day among seeming friends this was Orlais, and she could not be sure they were not being watched. 

But Thanduwen never had the chance to answer. As she racked her brain for the words that could bring some comfort to the families around her without compromising her position, there came the musical sound of coin upon coin upon stone, a purse meeting the cobbles. 

All eyes turned to the sound. A girl, no more than ten, stood a few paces away. She'd successfully untied Thanduwen's purse strings and was making away with it when she must have stumbled; now, the money was scattered across the street, coins of every metal shining resplendent in the afternoon light. 

And then the gaze of the gathered crowd found Thanduwen, breath baited, waiting for her reaction. 

The thief met Thanduwen’s eyes defiantly. Her gaze was hard, her knees scraped and bleeding from her fall—a faint trembling in her fingers was the only sign that she felt any fear at all. Her dress was stained and torn; her hair looked like it had not met a brush in weeks.

“What's your name, _da’len_?" 

The girl did not answer; only stood, looking at Thanduwen like she might spit on her. 

After a silence, one of the mothers spoke up. “Her name is Camille. She is an orphan. Her father was killed when the Empress destroyed the alienage.”

“And you are no better than her!” Camille growled. “You are here for her ball, to play her game. You wear the marks of the Dalish but you are a tool of the Chantry, and I know better than to trust in them. They did nothing for us after… after.”

Cullen saw the flash of pain on Thanduwen’s face—too familiar, by now—when Camille accused her of being no better than the Empress. He knew how she despised to be held accountable for the actions of the Chantry, an institution she could not (and never tried to) defend. 

But then Thanduwen took a deep breath, and reached out her hand. 

“Come here.”

Camille shook her head, _no_. 

“Go to her, you foolish girl,” another elf hissed, bending down and stuffing the coins back into the purse, pressing it into Camille’s hands and shoving her forward.

Camille stumbled, shooting a look of hatred and betrayal back at the adult who had pushed her. Then, looking daggers at Thanduwen she came forward, grudgingly holding her coin purse out. 

Thanduwen took the coin purse out of her hands, and set it down on the ground at her side. Then she reached out for her—Camille flinched. “It's okay,” Thanduwen assured her. “Let me see your knees.”

Blood was running freely down her calf. “You took a nasty trip there, didn't you?” Thanduwen said looking up into Camille’s face. The girl did not answer, even as Thanduwen reached out and laid her hands upon the young girls split knees. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Thanduwen asked, as her palms glowed with the subtle blue energy of the healing spell. When she pulled her hands away, the skin was clear, rejoined, the trickle of blood the only sign the wound had ever existed—

“I think the Chantry is pretty dumb, too,” Thanduwen admitted, leaning back on her heels. “If they were really what they say they are, they would have helped you. And you don't have to steal from me,” she said, reaching for her purse and opening it for her, extending her arms. “You can have it, whatever I have to give,… as long as you share it with the others. Can I trust you to do that?”

Camille nodded; the children around them cheered.

As the small girl began to distribute the last of Thanduwen’s coin, Thanduwen stood, and made her way over to one of the mothers. The elf woman had an infant slung across her chest, swaddled to her body in a faded cloth, and watched Thanduwen approach with an eyebrow raised. 

“What happened?” Thanduwen asked quietly, gesturing as subtly as she was able to the wreckage around them,

The elf woman huffed, bringing her hand to the back of her child’s head. “The same thing that always happens, Inquisitor. The same story told over and over in the cities since the fall of the Dales. We are met with cruelties and brutalities even the most impoverished of _shemlen_ are not expected to bear. When it becomes too much, we protest; our protest is met with violence enough to take our husbands and sons, to ruin our homes so that we are too weak to protest a second time.”

“I want to know everything,” Thanduwen said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Please. What happened this time?”

"And what will that accomplish, if I tell you?” the mother replied. “The thief was clumsy, but she is right. You _are_ the Chantry, and no matter how devoutly some of us sing the Chant, no matter how we cry out to Andraste for mercy, our cries are not answered.” She waved her hand dismissively, shooing Thanduwen away. “You will be no different. The brightness of coin is not enough to blind me.”

“I know you have no reason to trust me. My people... the Dalish, have long let the elves in the cities bear the brunt of suffering. I am ashamed that I did not know the state of the alienage sooner. I would not trust my sources now having omitted such info to find out what really happened. Please.”

But the mother looked yet unconvinced. Thanduwen did not blame her. Why would she believer her now, when the Dalish—her people—had long left the city elves to suffer their fates alone? Gods, the Dalish certainly had it hard, out in the wilds, but in her Clan they had rarely spared a thought for their brethren in the alienages. The Dalish feared being hunted for sport, but the alienage elves were simply _hunted_. There was no sport in it. They were rooted in one place.

“Listen,” Thanduwen said, leaning closer to the mother, looking at her imploringly. “There is a fair chance at the ball tomorrow I'll meet Briala. I want to help her—pledge her my support in more than just coin. But if I am to meet her like an equal, to begin an even partnership, I can't walk into that without knowing—really knowing—what happened here.”

The mother’s face shifted. It was still suspicious, but there was an interest there, too. Perhaps it was no more than an idly curiosity. But when she spoke again, her tone was slightly less cold. “You know of Briala?”

“I have looked forward to meeting her for a long time,” Thanduwen said, thinking of Mihris in the Hinterlands, all those months ago. “You must believe me when I say that meeting her will be a far greater honor than bowing before the Empress.”

The mother looked at her for a long while; Thanduwen had the impression she was being _measured._

“Alright,” the mother conceded. “I will tell you what happened. But not in front of the children, and not outside. We should not speak of these things where anyone can hear.”

Corinne came over, tugged at the woman’s skirts. _This woman must be her mother,_ Thanduwen thought. “Mamae? May I come in too?” she asked, peering up into her mother’s face.

“No. You play outside.” Then the mother looked at Thanduwen apologetically. “It will upset them, what we must discuss.”

Thanduwen turned her eyes behind her. Cullen was still standing there, a few paces apart from the others. Whatever infectious excitement had greeted her approach, none of the elves seemed the least bit interested in speaking with him.

Thanduwen did not blame them.

“Cullen?” she called. “It would be best, I think, if I go in alone. Go take these kids, get them something to eat, okay?”

Bless Cullen, so easy to read; his hesitation was plain on his face. “Josephine said—”

“Josephine did not want me causing a scene,” Thanduwen said, anticipating his rebuttal. “I respect these people too much to do so in their homes.” She looked over his shoulder at the gathered children, still gathered around Camille in the square.

“Take them somewhere,” she said, nodding in their direction. “Buy them something to eat. I'll meet you under the tree when I'm done.”

Cullen looked, briefly, as though he were going to fight her; then, thought better of it. By now Cullen knew that an argument with the Inquisitor was not one he was likely to win.

“Alright. But be careful.”

 

 

The building she was led to was a miracle: barely standing, still. The scorched walls had been reinforced here and there with whatever could be found—bits of old barrels, repurposed wheels of wagons—but inside it was clean, with not a trace of soot or ash. Sparsely furnished. Sylvaine—Corinne’s mother—led her to a table beside a paneless window, overlooking the market square, surrounded by old crates and barrels and one lone chair, which she was offered. After a moment of hesitation, she took it, reluctant to offend their sense of hospitality. 

Then the others sat around the table, and began to speak. And what struck Thanduwen most about their story was not so much what had occurred, but what had been endured before the city elves had met their limit.

“It is not the first time the nobles have taken the torch to our homes. Used to be they'd burn down the stores of merchants who had gotten too uppity—those who were demanding full payment for their labor, who had _forgotten their place_. But none can remember when or if the Empress herself had rode down to light the whole lower quarter.”

A noble had killed a merchant, an upstanding gentleman by the name of Lemet who, by all accounts, was kind, and generous, and fair. That had been the match that lit the powder keg, for not only had they slain the tradesman, but butchered his body and left bits of it scattered and strung up through the whole alienage.

“Comte Pierre increased patrols; then they started finding dead guards. Whole, mind you, for even after centuries of being robbed and beaten and raped in the slums, my people are above such cruelties as corpse mutilation.”

“And then, it escalated. Ten elves were dead by the end of the week. Many of us only wanted to keep our heads down, our children safe. But the others—foolish, drunk on the old stories of the ancient times—called for _mien’harel_.”

 _Mien’harel_ ; a proper rebellion. Parts of the alienage had been barricaded off. Weapons were fashioned out of the most meagre supplies: tools of blacksmiths and gardeners, slingshots to throw rocks. In the end, fearing a threat to her reign (for Celene had always been slandered as _too soft_ on the elves) she had come to Halamshiral herself, riding on a white horse in a company of her best soldiers as she burned the alienage to naught but ash.

“Now they do what they please with us, and we do not fight them,” Sylvaine continued, wearily. “Sometimes people vanish. We no longer go looking. If they have only been raped or beaten, they will return to us eventually. If they have been killed, we will not find them, even with searching. My brother—”

But Sylvaine’s words stop short; she froze on the spot. Her infant was still cooing in her arms; the child’s fat fists grabbing towards the face of her mother, but the elf woman is still.

“What is it, Sylvaine?” one of the other mothers— _Margot_ , Thanduwen thinks—asked her.

“A cart,” Sylvaine replied, worry creasing her brow. “Shouting.”

Sylvaine’s has picked out a sound that even Thanduwen’s ears, trained as they are, have not yet heard it; Thanduwen stood in her seat, leaned closer towards the window and, yes, sure enough, above the low murmur of city noise she could hear wagon wheels over the pocked cobbles of the alienage, and voices raised.

The thought occurs to her: _These women have become so accustomed to the sound of approaching danger; they are always listening for it._

“A carriage?” Margot asks, fear in her voice. “But why would they come now—”

“Not a carriage,” another woman replies. “I hear no horses.”

But the shouts have come nearer now. And among the many raised voices, the women in the kitchen can all hear the shrill cry of a child.

They are out of the seats before the alienage has swallowed the sound, chairs pushed back on the bare floor. Only Margot speaks, and the name of her son is torn from her lips in a sound of grief.

“Theo.”

They are out the door, Thanduwen on their heels as they enter the market square. The shouts come louder now. And the women are tense; one of them, Thanduwen observes, has her hands wrapped around a small knife. She knows not where the woman was concealing it. Her knuckles are already white around the hilt.

But Thanduwen… Thanduwen only focuses on the sound in the distance, and her heart skips a beat. For to her ears, the voices do not sound frightened, or pained, but… glad.

When the first elf child comes into view he is shouting and jubilant, dancing, his arms raised over his head. It must be Theo, Thanduwen thinks, because when he sees Margot, he breaks out into a clumsy run, dashing across the square to her side, wrapping his arms around her legs and tugging her skirt. “Mamae! Mamae!”

“Theo,” Margot sighs, breaths a sigh of relief, and kneels at his side. “What is going on? Why are you so excited?”

But the child does not need to answer, because in the next moment, a hoard of small children are entering the square, all of them shouting. They are clustered around a small cart, and Thanduwen can see even from a distance that it is laden with freshly cut meat, and produce. And pulling the cart—his Inquisition uniform stained with sweat from the exertion—is Cullen. There is another small elven child seated on his shoulders. She is laughing, her hands fisted tight in his golden curls.

Cullen is laughing, too.

Thanduwen _runs_ to him. 

By the time she meets him he has already dragged the cart to the market square, just alongside the charred husk of the alienage’s _vhen’adahl_. He is laughing, still—smiling light and fond as he untangles himself from the child on his shoulders, and sets the girl on the ground—and it occurs to Thanduwen (an idle and unbidden thought) that this is the happiest she has ever seen him. He looks so utterly unburdened and bright. And when he sets the small child on the ground and raises his eyes to hers, his face colors with embarrassment. His cheeks color the prettiest shade of pink as he winds his hand around his neck to rub his nape; his smile turns bashful.

Thanduwen has never thought, before, about kissing him with the same consideration she does in that moment.

But it is fleeting, and she stifles it, clenches her arms into fists at her sides and only releases them when the irrational thought has left her. Still she cannot stifle her grin, her eyes darting between the cart (which is laden, truly, with a _wealth_ of food—it is a testament to his strength that Cullen has dragged it as far as he had, even with the aid of wheels) and Cullen’s face.

“Cullen, how on _earth_ did you afford all this?”

Cullen shrugs, trying his best to look casual—failing. “I had some personal coin on me. Enough, anyway. In the lower quarters, the food is much cheaper.”

Thanduwen’s voice is incredulous. “You paid for this out of your own pocket?”

He looks so _stupid_ , stammering, blushing furiously. Thanduwen has never been more fond of him.. “I—well, I thought, if we were staying—you said to fetch them something to eat—”

But then he clears his throat. The adults have come up near them, and are watching him with interest and no small degree of suspicion. Cullen catches himself, passing a glance to the city elves as he folds into a low, deferentially bow. 

“I thought it would please you. _Inquisitor_.”

 

 

The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur. A fire is built to roast one of the largest pieces of meat; the other are set to dry, so that the meat will not spoil in the coming weeks, for Cullen in all his eagerness had purchased so much of it the elves cannot possibly eat it all in one night. But the alienage is large. Thanduwen is reassured that much of the surplus will be distributed to families in need.

Still, the meal is generous; the children are all allowed second portions. It is a subdued celebration, not quite as gay as the one Thanduwen had shared with Clan Lindiranae, for Sylvaine assures her that even if no laws have been broken, no crimes committed, they do not want to attract the attention of the city guard. There is no music. But there are many smiles; someone even manages to dig up a jar of _thaihyn_ , buried before the fire and protected from its blaze. Later, when Thanduwen hugs Sylvaine goodbye, the women hold each other tightly.

By nightfall, when Thanduwen and Cullen had been turned out, drunk, the streets were clear, but for the occasional shadow that crept at the edges of their vision. They paid that darkness no heed. Between the two of them they had not a coin to their name—there is nothing left for the thieves to steal, save the clothes on their backs.

It is dark. Thanduwen should find the city ominous, like this, but she has had two cups of _thaihyn_ , and she is warm from the farewells in the alienage, and… and the truth is, the drink and Cullen’s company have lulled her into a sense of safety and satisfaction that she has not felt in a long time.

“You did that,” Cullen says, looking at her fondly. “Helped them.”

“You did more than I,” Thanduwen said, smiling, and nudging his side gently with her elbow. “That cart—!” She laughs, thinking of the child pulling at his hair, but then she quiets. “But one night without hunger will change nothing. They cannot live off of hope, and legend. Tomorrow we will have to help Briala, however we can.”

“I have faith in you, Inquisitor,” he says, and his voice is soft, and full of too much awe. “You will find a way.”

 _Faith_. It is not the first time he has mentioned it. Thanduwen should let it go; Cullen is a believer, and that is not liable to change. But she’s a little tipsy from the _thaihyn_ , emboldened, and feeling fonder of him than she ever has. So she does not.

“Let me ask you a question,” she asks, raising a finger, stumbling a bit closer to him. “What with. The nightmare, and what I saw. Do you really still think I am… _holy_ , or whatever? An emissary of the Maker?”

Cullen regards her thoughtfully, but his eyes are unsteady; he, too, partook of the fruit wine, and it is clear his tolerance for it is not as strong as hers. “I think,” he says, carefully considering his words, “you should not ask questions if you don't really want to know the answer.”

The sound of exasperation she makes is loud enough to echo through the empty city streets. “Oh come on! Really? After all this? Everything I've put you through?”

“Put me thro— no,” Cullen is quick to retort, shaking his head. “If you had not...helped me. _Saved_ me. No one would have. I'd taking lyrium, though I had hoped to stop. I'd be... a disaster. You were the answer to my prayers in more ways than one, in ways I could not forsee, and I am a far better man for having known you.” 

Cullen turns away from her, his eyes focused on the road ahead. Thanduwen is thankful for it; she does not like the way he looks at her when he talks like this, all moon-eyed and soft. 

She feels that, if he looks at her that way tonight, she might do something she regrets.

But then his voice comes again: “And you know, I've never told anyone that. What happened to me at Ferelden Circle.”

Thanduwen spins to look at him. “No one?” she asks, bewildered. She had known that Cullen had confided in her, that it was not a story he was eager to tell. But she had not thought he had carried the burden of it alone for well on past a decade.

“Just you,” he says, softly, and when he looks at her there is something in his gaze that makes her feet light. Their footsteps slow, then stop; she can hardly make out the look Cullen is giving her in the dark, but she can feel his eyes on her. Too long. She—

Cullen clears his throat, loudly; that, too, echoes. And as the sound of it fades down the alleys and city streets he clasps his hands behind his back and starts walking, facing firmly ahead.

She can hardly make out the look of his face in the dark, and she is glad; it means that he cannot see the heat that is rising in her cheeks.

“I was surprised you did not taking Solas to accompany you,” Cullen says, but the casual tone in his voice sounds forced. “I thought you would have preferred his company.”

Something sinks in her stomach at the question—why, suddenly, does she not wish to admit to him that Solas _had_ been her first choice? By now, most of the Inquisition knows about the two of them. There should be no shame in it. But she does not want to make Cullen feel second fiddle. The truth is, what with Solas’ perpetual crisis of identity (one minute the elves are his people, in the next they are not, always they are _wrong_ ) Cullen, most unexpectedly, may have proved to be the better companion of the two. 

“I'm glad it was you,” she says. “You were… kind, and generous. I know Josephine insisted but… thank you, for coming with me. It was far more preferable than going alone.”

She can feel Cullen’s gaze on her again, too soft—they are drunk, and stupid, and foolish. But she is the less drunk of the two of them, and she is the Inquisitor, and it is her job—as always—to put things right before they go far more wrong. 

She turns to him, smiling as kindly as she can. Reaches up to pat him on the cheek. 

“We might be friends yet, in spite of all odds.”

Friends—nothing more. It is the kindest way she knows to draw a line in the sand, and hold herself behind it. Cullen smiles anyway. For he knows (as well as she does) that her admission means that they probably are that— _friends._ It has taken them months to fall into this familiarity, this comfort, this confidence; and Cullen knows, just as well as Thanduwen, not to risk it.

The rest of the way to the palace, they walk three paces apart.

 

 

[ _Solas_ had _been her first choice, but he had been unavailable. But he was not—as one might have expected—roaming the palace grounds, chatting up servants. His quarry was more ancient and elusive: in many ways, the events of the Bloomingtide Ball (whatever they might be) would be of far less consequence than whether or not Solas found what he sought._ ]

{ _In the Dirth, he had wanted to tell her: this is how it is, what I am, what I must do. They might have held hands and giggled in shared mischief as they stalked the walls of the Winter Palace, seeking another weapon for his arsenal:_

| _…a knot of ancient pathways, intricate, infinite. Felassan had told him that a door might be found here, and though Fen’Hrel had not the key, he thought the door might yet be forced. All the easier, had he told Thanduwen: had he the aid of the anchor…_  

 _But_ _I will tell you why the Rebel God did not reveal himself in full to his lover at the Rush of Sighs—_ |

{ _Which of old we called Ven Lea'vune, when the land was known as the Emerald March, and the Knights still kept the wood. And now rushes past my vallasdahlen, clutching my once-flesh._ }

< _—and it is the same reason why he turned his snout upward at that Commander fellow, who earlier on in her story, suffered both his and Thanduwen’s mutual indignation and contempt._ >

| _Instead of saying, “This is So: I am what I am, fated to be so and Unalterable by design,” the human Became. He did not share in Fen’Harel’s resignations, grim and smug in equal measure, that come with committing oneself to a course best left untrodden, committing unspeakable acts._

 _Instead, the Commander makes himself malleable, squishy and fragile meat-thing that he is. Precious in his fragility, like the chrysalis as it hangs from the branch. The moth teaches us there cannot be metamorphosis without some vulnerability. And there was plenty of vulnerability: embarrassments, failures, shame, pain (both caused by him and directed towards him), often times saying the wrong thing, often times this sticking of the boot into the mouth (taste of old Templar leather) and apologies, groveling; often times doing the wrong thing, reacting the wrong way, but accepting this and instead of sorrow taking all steps to correct and amend such reactions; and all the while policing his own behavior (with greater rigor than even he watches the soldiers that train under his command, that incisive eye, correcting stance, posture, thrust, defense) for anything distasteful, any trace of that Man whom he is No Longer, if by no other force than willing himself not to be, and if he must hold himself in such rigid introspection until the end of his days to not be that man then by the Gods he will do so (or “by the Grace of the Maker,” as the man might say) and defeat that darkness within him, a darkness he knows will never fully recede, will never be totally obliterated by Light (divine or otherwise) but with which he must learn to live, cohabitate, negotiate around, this blemish on his very soul._ |

[ _This is, of course, what the Child of the Dales loves about him, though she cannot bring herself to admit it: he shifts, he moves, he changes._ ]

| _And he is trying, ever, despite that; despite the irrevocability of such damage, despite the lives lost and the pain caused. Always working, always trying to be something else something better something better to serve others and better at listening to what service they might require (not simply bursting in, sword in hand, to defeat such demons with Violence & Holy Power) and trying to serve others with kindness, as he did, or does, or will do, in Halamshiral. _

_And where was Fen’Harel, for all of this? Where is Fen’Harel when the Child of the Dales seeks the ancient Wall? Fucking off in dungeonous, cavernous places, broom cupboards, alleyways and warehouses, following the red-haired girl with such curiosity at a certain distance, skulking; searching for ancient pathways through moonlit mirrors that (though he might for a time reclaim them) will not truly belong to him, not again, not for long._

_Because this is the Truth, the reason Fen’Harel cannot, will not be honest with her, not until the very end: he can change all of it. Wipe away the Ages of conquest and pain, war and cruelty, Blight; he can tear down the Veil and flood the world with magic and set the trees singing, he can transform the world utterly until it is unrecognizable. And the only thing within all this that remains constant is Himself. Because unlike Blackwall, unlike Cullen, unlike the Iron Bull—unlike all the others who strive and fight with such ferocity in their short lives to_ Become _—Fen’Harel believes himself incapable. He cannot “become better.” He is an instrument of terror; he is undeserving of redemption. He will not ask her for absolution._

 _He will not make her complicit._ |

< _Well what good does it do, if you know this, Idrilla? She is the one that needs to know._ >

| _She does. She will._ |

< _If she does, she did not say so. I think it is still a secret from her._ > 

{ _You are too hard on her Harea. Can you blame her from hiding from this truth? To acknowledge so would be to condemn another, to realize (to know) how fully he will fail her, in the end. But she will. When the others betray her, and fail her, and then put the full force of their character into redeeming themselves for those moments of weakness, it will throw into sharp relief how his betrayal is different. Indifferent to the pain it will cause her—if not in theory, than in practice._ }

< _None of us have time to lose over this woolgathering—the hour is already late. And what if she perishes? For she will surely perish if she cannot bear the weight of the Truth, the burden of what you will ask of her. You always ask so much, take so much. I do not know if she will give it up for you, her doomed hopes. Her love. And then we will be left with nothing._ >

[ _Oh but Harea, my sister-blood, you are no more than a memory. You do not remember how it was for you. I will take her loneliness and reform it into something beautiful. As I rebuilt you._ ]

< _Is that what you are then? A collector of broken things?_ >

 

 

Deep in the night, Solas found the Inquisitor on her balcony, leaning over the railing, rolled elfroot smoking in her hand. Before and below her stretched the eastern topiary garden: oblivious to his approach (for her door had been _locked_ ) she lost in thought, pondering fantasies of vengeance over a pride of emerald green lions that hissed up at her with every breeze.

“How scandalous,” he said, stepping through the balcony doors.

She started, then turned and, in seeing him, smiled. Her gaze flickered back to the joint in her hand, and she idly flicked some of the ash over the balcony’s rail. “They already think the worst of me,” she said. “What further harm can it do? If anything, it will only help. I need—I need to be _sedated_ , right now.”

He stepped out onto the intricately tiled balcony, his arms behind his back, sauntering to her side. “I think Josephine would suggest not encouraging such gossip.” 

Thanduwen quirked a smile at him. She reached out for him with her free hand, tangling their fingers and pulling him closer. “If that is our chief aim, then my ‘servingman’ should not be creeping into my quarters so late in the evening.” She stood up on her toes to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “How did you get in? I thought I had bolted the door.”

Solas pressed a reciprocal kiss to her forehead, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “Would it surprise you to learn that our quarters are joined by a hidden passageway?”

Thanduwen laughed—she could not help it. _Orlais_. She supposed that was supposed to unsettle her, a subtle _fuck you_ , as though the Orlesians thought that knowledge of her relationship with Solas gave them power over her. It did not. “No,” she mused aloud. “I suppose it shouldn’t.”

Solas regarded her thoughtfully, rocking ever so gently on his heels. “I can go, if you like.”

“No,” she was quick to say, her threaded fingers tightening their grip around his. “After the day I had….”

“What did you occupy yourself with?”

She should be angry with him—or, she had _wanted_ to be. But he was here, now, and that was what mattered. And anyway, all of her fury was being directed elsewhere, at masked nobles and their scheming. “I saw the alienage,” she told him, running a finger thoughtfully over her bottom lip before she raised the elfroot to her mouth again. “Josephine made me take Cullen. We spent the whole day there.” 

“Cullen?” Solas asked her, and his voice is colored in equal measure by surprise and disdain. “That is… unexpected. How did it go?”

She breathed out through her nose, twin plumes of smoke curling out of her, setting a fog just above the heads of the topiary beasts. She needs it—the space of her billowing exhale—before she can reply, choosing her words carefully. 

| _There have been no indiscretions: still, she would not have wanted Solas to witness the walk back she shared with Cullen, would not have wanted him to see the way Cullen had looked at her._ |

“It was okay, actually,” she said, finally, tapping loose the ash at the end of the joint. “Not bad. He was… very sensitive, and kind. Still I would have preferred your company.”

(It is not _exactly_ a lie.)

Solas looked genuinely sorry to hear it. He reached out to her, placed a hand on her back, just covering the wing of her shoulder blade. “Ir abelas, vhen’an. I had other matters to attend.”

She turned to him with a crooked grin, her eyes narrowed. “Like checking all our quarters for secret passageways?”

He only smiled in response. But then he took a deep breath, and his fingers began to circle gently on her back. “Are the rumors true, then?”

“What rumors?”  
  
“About the alienage. About its… condition.”

Thanduwen turned fully towards him, her eyes wide. Leliana, Josephine… they had hid this from her. She will reprimand them for it—she was _furious_ about that omission—but at least she can understand why they withheld the information. Solas, she thought, has nothing to gain by similar deceptions. “You knew?”

“I heard from one of the palace servants,” he says, softly. Elaborates, “Today, when we were apart. It sounded… devastating. But to have seen it… that must have been difficult for you.”

Thanduwen sighed. Difficult—it had been difficult. But the worst, she thought, was yet to come, for what she had found in the alienage meant she was about to throw away months of careful planning and positioning, discard entirely the goals the Inquisition had set for what they hoped to achieve at the next night’s ball. Difficult because she only had til dawn to sort out what to do about it. She leaned closer to Solas, his hand sliding across and down her back, looping around her waist as she curled close to him.

“The more of the world I see, the more miserable it looks,” was all she said. 

[ _She does not know, does not see, how that admission shakes him, for it sounds too much like something he himself might say._ ]

His thumb traced a thoughtful arc on her hip bone. “And so now you are here, making yourself even more insensate than you were before, having found one intoxicating substance insufficient… based on the smell of _thaihyn_ wafting off of you.”

She scowled. “If I do not deaden my senses all I will feel is the rage, and that will accomplish little.” Then she raised her hand and formed a barrier over the two of them, muffling their speech. (They were, after all, in Orlais; she could not rule out the possibility that someone was listening to them.) 

Thanduwen closed her eyes as she hit the joint a second time, ember burning paper and dried root alike, and when she exhaled the calm that washed over her was so tremendous and welcome she shuddered in pleasure. Then she smiled. “I am plotting a coup.”

“Oh? How intriguing.” Solas asked. He pressed a kiss to her temple. “May I offer my assistance?”

Thanduwen’s grin split wider. She might have known he would be a willing and eager participant in her plotting. “ _Vhen’an,_ nothing would please me more.”

Solas laughed. “Alright,” he said. He extended his free arm to hers, reaching for the elfroot still burning in her hand. “Firstly: What do we know about the Empress?”

She grinned, passing him the elfroot, and began to recite the histories that Vivienne and Dorian had been filling her head with for months. 

[ _Before night’s end, they had something like a plan; after all, the Courts of Arlathan would have made the Orlesian’s ‘game’ look like child's play._ ]

And that night they made a ferocious, violent kind of love, all grasping hands and teeth. He pulled at her hair; she bit his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. They snarled and shouted each other’s name without caring who might overhear them, and though as they rutted they spoke not a word of the dark deed they would soon set into motion, it hovered between them: a secret, an aphrodisiac. The promise of blood spilt, and tomorrow, Thanduwen would let it flow without remorse, for none among the Orlesian nobility were innocent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OTHER VOICES:  
> [ ] ???  
> < > Harea  
> { } Tanaleth  
> | | Idrilla  
> ~ ~ ???
> 
> A/N: I DID THE THING. my goodness. Sorry this update took so long—life has been a bit crazy. 
> 
> I have no intention of putting this fic on 'hiatus' or anything—I still very much want to finish it—but getting the updates out regularly has been a little bit of a struggle for me. I think this is mostly because of arbitrary constraints I have put on myself, like (for example) update length. This update was 12k words. Writing it was not the problem; editing was. It has become very difficult for me to get 12k words where I want them, especially since I like to do one edit all the way through, and honestly that requires me to set aside a few hours.
> 
> So, that being said, I think there is a fair chance that I am going to downsize the WC of my updates and endeavor to update more frequently. 
> 
> Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me despite my often erratic update schedule. <3 I don't want to promise the next one won't take as long, but I am going to try my damnedest.


End file.
